The GOP schism is deeper than you think

Republicans are fighting for the future of their party amid divisions in the U.S. Congress and feuds at the local level, according to political scientists who spoke to Newsweek.

Local Republican parties in several states are experiencing division among their members, while Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate are also at odds over key issues.

The divisions come as newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson appears to be heading for a clash with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over aid for Ukraine.

Johnson was elected speaker following the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He was chosen on the fourth ballot after Representative Jim Jordan failed to win enough support from his GOP colleagues and withdrew after the third ballot.

The divide among House Republicans over the speakership is not the only internal conflict the GOP is facing, as several local parties also show signs of division.

GOP Feuds

In Michigan, two factions of the Hillsdale County Republican Party are engaged in a feud with the America First faction claiming that another faction, led by Commissioner Brent Leninger, was censured by the Michigan GOP, meaning they are not the county’s official Republican Party leaders.

The two factions held separate conventions in August. America First gained control of the Hillsdale County GOP in 2020. However, on August 25, 2022, Leninger’s faction held a meeting that appointed a temporary executive committee, removing the America First leadership.

The America First faction considers that move to be unlawful, and the two factions clashed again on September 12 over the reappointment of two members to the Board of Canvassers.

In Texas earlier this month, House Speaker Dade Phelan called for fellow Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to give donations he had received from Defend Texas Liberty PAC to charity after it was revealed that the PAC’s president had hosted white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, citing the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Patrick denounced Fuentes in a statement but called for Phelan to resign as speaker, claiming he was using the conflict for “his own political gain.”

Republicans in New Hampshire have clashed over former President Donald Trump’s eligibility to be on the 2024 presidential ballot, with a Trump-endorsed 2020 U.S. Senate candidate, Bryant “Corky” Messner, questioning whether the former president is disqualified under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

Chris Ager, chair of the state Republican Party, said in August that he disagreed with Messner, adding that “the Republican Party will fight to make sure that candidates are not denied access to the ballot.”

Separately in Virginia, a court in March sided with Dawn Jones, chair of the Republican Legislative Committee in the recently created 17th state Senate district, and ordered a primary to be conducted for selecting the Republican candidate there.

Jones had brought the motion after state officials had changed the method of candidate selection from a primary to a convention. She also filed a lawsuit against the State Board of Election, claiming they had made the change under pressure from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares.

Political scientists who spoke to Newsweek on Tuesday suggested clashes like these were indicative of broader issues in the GOP.

Sharp Divides

The future of the Republican Party may be what’s at stake in internal GOP feuds, according to Thomas Gift, founding director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London.

“All the state-level feuds within the GOP suggest that Republicans on Capitol Hill don’t have a monopoly on party dysfunction,” Gift told Newsweek. “The sharp divides that are tearing Republicans apart at the seams in Washington seem to be rippling out across the country.”

“While some of these may just be isolated anecdotes, it’s hard not to see them collectively as emblematic of a broader struggle over the future direction of the GOP,” Gift added.

“Much like in the House of Representatives, there’s a fierce battle underway for the soul of the GOP across the country, and it’s one rapidly descending into local factional fighting amidst a party that’s anything but united a shade under a year out from the crucial 2024 elections,” Mark Shanahan, an associate professor in politics at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, co-editor of The Trump Presidency: From Campaign Trail to World Stage, told Newsweek.

“For many decades, any ‘battle’ within the GOP at state level was between the financial clout of Wall Street Republicans buoyed by the corporate lobby and Main Street Republicans who conducted their party politics largely at the local country club,” Shanahan said.

Shanahan said that “changed after the 2008 crash with the emergence of a Tea Party insurgency—a well-organized grassroots campaign that took the party to the right, opening the door to conservative activism that denuded state parties of much of their traditional centrist heft.”

The Role of MAGA

While there have been divisions in the Republican Party for decades, the role of Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans is a crucial factor.

Shanahan told Newsweek that in recent years the “Tea Party wave has been utterly smashed by MAGA activists, just as conservative, tinged with Evangelicalism, but mainly proselytizing fervently for Donald Trump.”

“They don’t have the ground game and organization of the party officials who preceded them, and their tactics often seem negative and driven by resentment—how many state parties are still fighting lawsuits around 2020 election result denial?” he said.

“The goal of the MAGA insurgency seems much more to do with power than how that power is used for the collective good,” Shanahan continued. “Aping Trump, they appear more likely to leap for a lawsuit rather than a ballot box to sort out disputes, and are often conspicuous for loud vocals rather than depth of thought.”

An Ugly Result

Divisions within the Republican Party could cause the GOP problems when it comes to elections.

Shanahan told Newsweek that MAGA Republicans too often “echo a loose Trumpist national narrative rather than really addressing the local issues they’ve been elected to deal with.”

“The result for the GOP at present appears ugly: a divided and rancorous collection of widely polarized views, with little prospect of a cohesive, vote-winning manifesto at local, state or national level leading into 2024,” he said.

“Who wins these fights is important, not least because Republicans in recent decades have been disproportionately influential in seizing control of state houses and other local offices,” Gift told Newsweek.

“Internal tussles threaten that grip on power insofar as they present an image to voters of a party that’s in disarray,” he said.