The House Republican Conference is poised to have a much different ideological look after the 2024 elections, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) can arguably take credit for most of it.
In October, Gaetz made congressional history when he successfully ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the top position in the House of Representatives. What followed was a three-week slog that saw the House Republican Conference cycle through three different speaker nominees before eventually electing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) to the post.
The chaos wrought by McCarthy’s ouster forced House Republicans to come to terms with the fact that their conference is a mishmash of representatives with a broad range of ideologies, especially on how Washington, D.C., should function.
But the lasting impact of Gaetz’s motion to vacate may be more than installing Johnson as speaker.
To date, 17 Republican members have announced their intentions to retire from Congress. Of those 17, five are seeking higher office and 12 are completely retiring from politics. Those retiring members include Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), who was first elected in 1996, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), who was first elected in 2004, and Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), who was elected for the first time in 2008.
The retirements of Granger and McHenry are especially notable given that the former is the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee and the latter is the chairman of the Financial Services Committee.
The retirement of these longtime members was no doubt significantly influenced by the three weeks of chaos that followed the ouster of McCarthy. Suddenly, the comfort and prestige of holding a seat in Congress became far less glamorous as late night votes racked up and the chamber was paralyzed by warring factions within the majority party.
All of these retirements have the potential to change the House GOP’s ideological makeup significantly, arguably making it far more conservative and willing to embrace dirtier legislative fights with Democrats. And Matt Gaetz is totally OK with that.
“There’s a certain echelon of members for whom if the cocktail parties aren’t super convenient because we’re voting all night, (as I’ve caused a time or two) if the PAC donations aren’t running over the gunnels because we’ve taken a populist position on immigration or another important matter to our voters, then some don’t see the value proposition in Congress,” Gaetz told me in an interview. “I’m quite alright with that.”
Gaetz has a point. The retiring members overwhelmingly come from the more establishment wing of the Republicans. Heritage Action for America, which keeps a scorecard of the conservative voting record of members of Congress, places the average score of the 12 retiring members who are not seeking other offices at 73%. And that doesn’t include Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who resigned at the end of December, and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), who will resign this weekend.
In contrast, Gaetz and the other members who ousted McCarthy mostly have scores in the mid-80s to even 100%. One retiring member, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ), has a 100% score.
The retiring members, by and large, have not legislated as conservatives when it matters and have typically proven unwilling to fight Democrats on critical issues. And most of these members do not represent front-line swing districts; they represent seats that would be held by Republicans regardless of the political climate.
With a looming presidential election in November, the ideological shift within the House GOP could prove significant, especially if likely Republican nominee Donald Trump wins the presidency. And the former president’s impact on the party is being felt among the candidates running in Republican primaries.
Gone are the corporate-friendly candidates with ties to Wall Street and big business. Instead, candidates are lining up behind Trump’s vows to deport illegal immigrants, place tariffs on foreign imports, and cut back on foreign aid to countries like Ukraine.
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“No one in a competitive route Republican primary is outwardly running as a Kevin McCarthy Republican, no one is running as a Liz Cheney Republican, as a Chris Christie Republican, as a Mitt Romney Republican,” Gaetz said. “If you look at a lot of these contests, even people who might not legislate and govern quite like I do seem to be more willing to embrace my pugilistic style of representative government as opposed to the surrender style that we’ve seen from the Chamber of Commerce [representatives] of yesteryear.”
With those “Chamber of Commerce” members increasingly leaving Congress, the enduring legacy of Gaetz’s ouster of McCarthy may be a more conservative House GOP going forward. A House GOP that doesn’t shy away from tough votes and is willing to draw a hard line when negotiating with Democrats.