Speaker Johnson tells Republicans campaigning against each other ‘to cool it’

The big stories in the 118th Congress have been the seemingly endless bickering among the House Republican majority. Now they are adding more fuel to the fire. Incumbent Republicans are actively

campaigning

to eliminate their own colleagues in the primaries. A major violation of protocol, but one that underscores the bad blood within the House Republican conference. Now, at least for the primaries, Republican lawmakers are maneuvering to defeat their own colleagues, and President Johnson has had enough. He told my colleague Melanie Zanoni at last week's Republican retreat that she had told her members to calm down. It's not productive and divisive for obvious reasons.

But as my new report with Melanie reveals, Johnson's warnings haven't changed the situation yet, especially with Florida firebrand Matt Gaetz, who led the charge to oust Kevin McCarthy from the presidency in the fall. Gaetz skipped retirement last week and instead flew to Texas to meet with the then-candidate challenging incumbent Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez. It's the second primary Gaetz has tried to meddle in in the last year. My panel is back. So I've talked to you, Gaetz is not the only one. There are several

other

s who try to make fun of

other

colleagues. I spoke with Gaetz about why he is doing this and why he is targeting Congressman Gonzalez.

So why Tony González? I cannot save the country with the current Congress we have. We are going to need new members and better members. I would love nothing more than to go after the Democrats. But if Republicans are going to dress up as Democrats in disguise, I'll go after them too. Because at the end of the day, we are not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress, but by whether or not we saved the country. I mean, to a large extent this is a fight about tactics and how to achieve your goals. No compromise in the face of some incremental progress.

But Gaetz obviously likes to stir the pot. Absolutely. It is not surprising. I have to say. It is a question of governing. Good. And how the Republicans in the House of Representatives define it. There is a pragmatic, more pragmatic wing that is willing to r

each

agreements between Republicans and, sometimes, with Democrats. And then there is that MAGA wing that just wants to keep pushing policies further and the way they like to see them. So they're both arguing: I need a Republican of my type to form the House Republican Conference so we can pass whatever kind of legislation

each

group thinks is best.

And that's why we're seeing a lot of far-right members trying to oust more committed Republicans, if you want to call them that, like Tony Gonzalez did, supporting gun reform because he represents them all day. But now we're also seeing more of those pragmatic Republicans, the Main Street association, which represents this Main Street caucus. One of the five ideological families at the conference also sought to go after Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good because they want more, quote-unquote, Republican incumbents to form the caucus. And that's one of the four Republicans. So actually, Bob, well, there are people who are attending a fundraiser for the Bob Good challenge.

There are several of these conservative members, some more moderate members, some more establishment members, people who are aligned with the leadership that is trying to unseat the leader of the Freedom Caucus and the far-right bloc. But let's go back to Texas, because I think one of the telling things about all of this, as you mentioned here, is the question of compromise and how that creates problems in the primaries. Tony González represents Duvall Day. He voted for this change in gun laws in the last Congress. Additionally, he voted to codify same-sex marriage, which also caused him some problems on the right.

I asked him if he supported those two votes. Those votes. So you support those two votes, of course. Yes. Look what happened in New Valley. It should never have happened. Not because I was 18 years old. Not because he was an air, because he was crazy, right? Crazy. People should not have access to killing innocent people. I am a father of six children. Whatever gay is, I'm as far away from it as possible. But I've served with all kinds of people in the military, you name it. And I look, I look at, you know, the merit of an individual.

But look, runoffs are very difficult, especially when you're faced with people trying to go to your right in a low-turnout election. You could be in trouble. Yes. And I think the gun vote is especially a problem here. We are seeing a situation in which these members demonstrate against Tony González, targeting him for this type of vote. You know, we're already seeing the Republican Party come together around a vision that is Donald Trump's. We're going to see fewer and fewer votes like that. This is a guy who comes from a district that had very localized experience on this issue and voted by district.

What we're seeing from Gates and others is that they're basically trying to push him in a different direction, vote more along party lines, not go outside of his party norm. It will be really interesting to see if he can survive in a primary. Yes, and look, this is not just Gates or others too. Congressman Ralph Norman is targeting a fellow South Carolina Republican, Will Timmons, and other members of the House Freedom Caucus are also going after the sitting congressman. Like I told him, I think he needs to change this place. We have to make some drastic changes.

We are losing that country. We are going bankrupt. In my opinion, he simply had not taken on a leadership role. And now we have this man who had the South Carolina Freedom Caucus. He will fight for freedom and he will be one of us. He will be one of us. That's what he said about this challenger. Now. I also spent last week talking to a lot of Republicans about this whole partisan war. And this simply speaks to the low morale within the House. Republican Conference right now. This is depressing when you have your own team facing each other because you don't win.

When that happens, teams win and, frankly, we've undermined the norms we've had for a couple of centuries. We are now

campaigning

in each other's districts. That undermines the team. So I think it's wrong and we're not going to get too involved in their stuff. They shouldn't get involved in our business. That's not a healthy situation when you start targeting other members, and especially when the Republican conference does it, you can't do it. I mean, you cover the White House. How did you see all this infighting between the Republican Party and the Republican Party? Well, they have to be a little careful because it undermines the government, which is what they want.

They want the legislation to be passed. And this prevents them from doing so, or at least creates a big obstacle for them. But they can also use it to their advantage. We saw it so clearly with the Senate border bill that House Republicans didn't go along with it. Now, that had been achieved through bipartisan compromise and with the help of the White House and administration officials. And then it completely collapsed. And now we're hearing the president use that on the campaign trail to say, look, House Republicans don't want to work with us. They are not doing their job.

But then inside the White House, they want them to do their job to make sure the government is funded so they can try to get other legislation passed. They can also promote during the election campaign. So it's all quite delicate. But in any case, in an election year, it helps them reinforce their campaign message by saying that the Republicans in the House of Representatives are so tied together that they can't do anything and the Democrats can. Yeah, look, in a lot of these districts where there's infighting, incumbents backing their incumbents in some, these aren't terribly competitive districts.

So it's not that getting a more extreme candidate in the primaries is going to cost the party the general election. But on the margins, you know, the fact that the conference is going after each other like this, it's not the only example of this kind of infighting where we're seeing the rules fail. We are seeing that the measures supported by the

speaker

fail in plenary. If there is a very close majority in the House heading into the 2024 elections. Even at the margins, hurting them in some of these districts could matter greatly. Yes, and the composition of the members does matter, especially as we have seen in a narrow majority.

Do we want a commitment? Don't make concessions. We have seen many cases of non-commitment.