Republicans are plotting to punish the 13 members of their House caucus who crossed party lines and voted for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package last week, providing crucial support for a bill that narrowly passed, 228-206.
According to Punchbowl News, GOP hardliners want the 13 members stripped of their committee assignments. It’s unclear if their efforts will bear fruit.
Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows supported the idea of castigating Republicans who refuse to move in lockstep with their party. Appearing on Steve Bannon’s talk show, Meadows explained “These people voted for Joe Biden, for an infrastructure bill that will clear the way for more socialist spending that, quite frankly, gives Joe Biden a win.”
Former Trump White House aide Mercedes Schlapp expressed a similar sentiment on Fox Business, saying “I just find it to be disappointing coming from these 13 Republicans who have given a win to [Nancy] Pelosi and a win to Joe Biden.”
NBC News adds:
Trump called the recalcitrants “RINOs” — Republicans in name only — after last week’s House vote, saying they should be “ashamed of themselves” for supporting “Democrat longevity.” And one of his chief allies is calling for vengeance.
The question for “our conference is whether or not we will allow people to be designated as Republican leaders on major committees and subcommittees while they fight for the Joe Biden agenda and against the America First agenda,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said on NewsMax. “If that isn’t cleaned up, if that isn’t corrected, then the current Republican minority you see in the House might not be ready to earn the majority.”
In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, political scientist Jonathan Bernstein writes:
As everyone noted after the news broke, 19 Senate Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted for the bill in August; support for it wasn’t some fringe position within the party when it cleared Congress last week. And indeed, as Jonathan Chait points out, the perceived problem with the bill wasn’t the substance. It’s that it was a Democratic bill. This wasn’t the first move by Republicans to punish one of their colleagues for cooperation with Democrats, as former conference chair Liz Cheney could remind us.
The dynamic that tends to govern these tantrums is simple. Republican radicals are constantly looking for ways to differentiate themselves from the party’s mainstream. They can’t do it on policy because the party is already extremely conservative, so they wind up looking for procedural maneuvers — shutting down the government, for example — even if there’s no point to it.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake adds, “These 13 members are assumed to be members of the team and they should do what’s best for the party, first and foremost. By and large, [the politics in play don’t] allow for the idea that, just maybe, they were voting for something they thought was a good idea or was good for their constituencies.”
Earlier this week, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) shared an animated video on social media that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). No steps within the GOP have been taken to punish him.
Editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution puts it all in perspective.
