Internal conflicts and power struggles have become hallmarks of the modern GOP
COLUMBUS, Ohio — After Ohio Republicans bolstered their statehouse majority last year due to their dominating showing in the midterm elections, they split into rival camps over who should lead the lower chamber.
The division between younger, more impatient conservatives and more traditional ones was only settled when Democrats crossed party lines to end a standoff over who would become speaker of the Ohio House.
Since then, despite their power over all levels of state government, Ohio Republicans have been convulsed by infighting as party leaders censured everyone who had voted for their new speaker, Republican Jason Stephens. Amid the divisions, the Legislature managed to pass only 10 bills this year.
“Childish would be my word,” said Republican state Rep. Sara Carruthers of her colleagues who persist in opposing the speaker and even slapped him with a lawsuit. “We’re on the right path, doing the right things, wanting to get good legislation passed and he’s helping them do that. And then, bam, it blows up.”
From Columbus to Phoenix to the halls of Congress, the Republican Party has been stuck in a prolonged internal conflict, with power struggles and primary challenges becoming as much of a GOP staple as tax cuts and tough-on-crime rhetoric.
In Michigan, the chair of one county party told police he was “kicked in the crotch” by a rival during a party meeting. In Arizona, Democrats last year swept four statewide races after insurgent Republicans won their party’s nomination. In Texas, the Republican attorney general, after successfully fighting off removal from office following his impeachment by the GOP-controlled state House, this week suggested he could request criminal charges against some in his own party for allegedly violating state privacy laws.
The party scuffling peaked last week when a small group of conservative U.S. House members banded with Democrats to depose Speaker Kevin McCarthy, leaving the post vacant just as war broke out in the Middle East.
The internal tussle over who will become House speaker — a position that is second in the constitutional line of succession to the presidency — exemplifies the perpetual chaos inside GOP ranks. McCarthy was the fifth member of his party to hold the speaker’s position in the 19 years the GOP has controlled the House of Representatives since 1995, and the first to be ousted in a vote. In contrast, during the eight years Democrats controlled the House during that time, they had a single speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
Democrats have plenty of their own internal conflicts too — currently New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has rebuffed calls from some inside his party to step down after his indictment on corruption charges last month, triggering multiple primary challenges. But Democrats have seen nothing like the perennial GOP internal clashes.
Republicans have had an aggressive wing of activists who have challenged the establishment ever since former congressman Newt Gingrich moved from being a congressional backbencher to House speaker in 1995, after he targeted members of his own conference for not being conservative enough.
“On the right, there’s been a push, certainly since the Tea Party movement, to shift how Washington operates,” said Jenny Beth Martin, a veteran activist who runs Tea Party Patriots Action, which has repeatedly clashed with the GOP establishment. “To get a shift like that to happen, you need to push against the people on your side who support the status quo before you confront the other side.”
Many Republican politicians also cite a media environment, especially on the right, that rewards polarizing, grievance-filled rhetoric. On Monday, McCarthy blamed his ouster on “a few individuals that love a camera more than they love the American public.”
But, in the end, the conflict comes from the party’s base. Repeated polls have shown Republican voters are more opposed to compromise than Democratic ones, laying the groundwork for repeated struggles.
“You have a party consisting of constituencies that see themselves as under siege — white Christians who see a country that is less white Christian, working-class people who see a country where all advantages go to the college-educated,” said Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California.
In contrast, Democratic constituencies — immigrants and their children, African Americans and younger college graduates — see themselves as having brighter prospects.
“It’s the coalition of the ascendant versus the coalition of the resentful,” Pitney said.
The fight played out nationally in 2022, as a wave of insurgent Republican candidates, often backed by former President Donald Trump, beat party picks in key swing state primaries, only to fall short on Election Day.
Most dramatically, in Arizona, insurgent Republicans who castigated the more moderate members of their own party — who had once supported the late Sen. John McCain — won nominations for governor, U.S. Senate, secretary of state and attorney general. All of them lost to Democrats last November.
