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GOP Rep. Don Bacon has had it with the far-right of his conference.
They’ve thrown out one House speaker and are trying to dump another one, all while scuttling their leadership’s agenda and now actively campaigning against incumbent Republicans — including himself.
After House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good of Virginia announced his support for Bacon’s GOP rival ahead of his May 14 primary, the Nebraska Republican now plans to take matters into his own hands.
“I am supporting Bob Good’s opponent now … because Bob Good came out and endorsed my opponent,” Bacon, who says he has never endorsed against a colleague until now, told CNN. “So we’re going to go in with everything we’ve got. That’s how it works.”
It has long been a breach of protocol on Capitol Hill to campaign against sitting members of the same party. But the 118th Congress has seen the House GOP descend into a seemingly endless series of intraparty wars, with members hurling personal insults at each other, pointedly blaming each other for their failures to enact a conservative agenda and now actively stumping to defeat their own Republican colleagues in races that will carry major consequences for the direction of the party.
In Texas, Rep. Tony Gonzales is trying to fend off a challenger backed by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and by Good — whom the incumbent Republican recently derided as “scumbags” — ahead of his May 28 runoff. In South Carolina, members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus are rallying around conservative state Rep. Adam Morgan, who is trying to knock off Rep. William Timmons in the June 11 primary. In Virginia, center-right Republicans and the…
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