House Republicans are facing a dilemma going into campaign season in 2024. What accomplishments are they going to cite to convince voters to return their majority to the House?
GOP House members have spent the last two years spilling their own blood in internecine battles over spending. The fact that very little has been accomplished has many Republicans fretting the onset of the campaign.
“We have nothing. In my opinion, we have nothing to go out there and campaign on,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said on the conservative network Newsmax in January. “It’s embarrassing.”
It's also the equivalent of political harakiri. Voters are interested in what individual members have done, but they're also keen on weighing what advancements the party in power has made. And Republicans have left themselves wide open to Democratic attacks that they are a "do nothing party" good for screaming at each other and Democrats.
It's not like there aren't opportunities for major accomplishments. The spending deal that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) worked out has substantial cuts in non-defense spending. And an immigration bill negotiated in the Senate would, in any other Congress, be a huge GOP victory.
But in both cases, the right-wing Freedom Caucus sees the bills as "surrender" because the bills don't have 99% of what the Caucus wants. Why should voters return a Republican majority to the House when the GOP right-wing makes perfection an enemy of the good?
We've now entered an age where passing anything in Congres that helps the opposing party needs to be defeated. It's an absolute guarantee of legislative gridlock. Consider a tax bill that a bipartisan group of senators worked out. It would restore several key Trump-era business tax cuts that have expired. But the bill would also partially restore the extremely popular COVID-era child tax credit.
The tax bill faces some skepticism from Senate Republicans and fierce opposition from the business-aligned Wall Street Journal editorial board, which complained that it would “give Democrats a huge policy victory” on the child credit. “Republicans haven’t done much in the 118th Congress, and in their scramble to compensate they may now do real policy harm,” the paper wrote.
Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the former acting speaker, said Johnson “should seek wider counsel than the loudest people who line up in the queue” — referring to far-right members who oppose compromises with the Senate — warning that the GOP could suffer politically without some legislative victories.
McHenry, a nine-term veteran of the House, was considered for the speaker's chair.
“If we keep extending the pain and creating more suffering, we will pay the price at the ballot box. But if we can get on with governance, and get the best policy wins we can, then you can open-field this thing,” he said. “But at this point, we are sucking wind because we can’t get past the main object in the road. Once we get past that main object, then it’s the president’s performance on the economy, it’s the president’s performance on national security.”
“We need to get the hell out of the way, cut the best deals we can get,” he said. “And then get on with the political year.”
The problem is that the Freedom Caucus doesn't care about the "best deals" the GOP can get on these bills. In fact, is isn't interested in any deals at all unless it is able to get exactly what it wants. Otherwise, it's a "surrender," and Republicans are no better than Democrats.
Is that really what the GOP is prepared to run on?
