Just In | The Hill
The Republican Party is in complete chaos — exemplified, but not limited to the continuing battle to choose a Speaker for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives — and if the party doesn’t change course, it will come to regret it. This moment is make-or-break for the GOP, and what the party does will determine where it goes in the future and whom it represents.
The internal struggles for power within the GOP have national consequences, determining what ideology the party will embrace and how those ideals will be realized legislatively and ultimately exercised. This is concerning because some of what we have seen goes against the grain of what I would argue are in sync with our values as a country, regardless of whether we’ve always realized them or not.
The “Make America Great Again” movement has turned the GOP into one big grievance party with no real solutions to Americans’ problems. The horrendous 2022 midterm performance by Republicans should be enough for the party to seek a different course, leaving MAGA to be forgotten. As catchy of a slogan as it is, MAGA hasn’t lived up to its promise to bring America back to some great halcyon days. It was intended to bring back the Rust Belt, which remains corrupted by opioids and a lack of job and economic opportunities. It was intended to restore a sense of dignity and identity to struggling, forgotten people who face a common foe — an elite class of powerful, wealthy individuals whose stakes in our economy continue to rise as those of all others continue to fall. Instead of resolving the country’s racial divisions, it worsened them.
The Republican Party has become a nationalist-populist party that has fallen short in elections and has failed to pass any major legislation based on its new principles, which remain incoherent and illusive. To be frank, this new movement started during the Tea Party days and, emboldened by MAGA, has led to severe problems within the GOP that have crippled the party electorally and within its own ranks.
The problems of MAGA have caused serious problems for the Republican House caucus, too, and its ability to quickly structure itself to govern. Yes, the MAGA movement led millions of disaffected voters to join in the political process — but it also has crippled the GOP internally.
Look no further than House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), whose bid to become the next House speaker has been a nightmare. It’s fine for members to request concessions from leadership to garner their support — it happens on both sides and is not out of the political norm. Yet the MAGA wing of the House GOP caucus has been completely unreasonable in their requests, further showcasing why it’s time for the GOP to abandon the MAGA movement and reform itself as a governing party. According to Axios, GOP hardliners have demanded that it become easier to “force a vote on motions to vacate the chair – or dislodge the speaker.” They have also requested that “leadership refrain from spending to tip the scales in Republican House primaries, another monumental ask for McCarthy.”
There isn’t a speaker in the history of the House that would ever agree to such an absurd request because it would weaken them, holding the speakership hostage to a small, raucous few. It would be disruptive to the entire legislative process, which should be avoided at all cost in our already partisan climate. The November midterms taught us that candidate quality matters — and if the party leadership had done its job by supporting, from the outset, those candidates with the best chances of winning, the midterm results might have been very different.
It’s impossible to overlook the GOP’s multitude of problems or their severity. The party is seriously declining and risks further fracturing itself and dampening its future electoral success. What does a modern GOP look like in a changing, diverse America? How does the GOP meet future problems with principles based on conservatism while also recognizing the innate nature of people to desire progress and the betterment of their unique positions and circumstances? If the GOP can wrestle with this question and focus on governing, the party indeed has a chance to be a party that can compete for all Americans’ votes, and not just a select, declining few.
Shermichael Singleton is a political strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Republicans Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ben Carson. He’s the host of “Bigger than Politics” on SiriusXM.
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