MAGA Reps Suddenly Face an Existential Threat: Themselves

It would be hard to argue that Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) is guilty of the worst sin in today’s GOP—being a dreaded RINO, or “Republican In Name Only.”

The Illinois congressman endorsed Donald Trump for president and voted with him 93 percent of the time during his administration. Bost voted to throw out the electoral votes of states Joe Biden won in 2020. And Trump has even endorsed his 2024 re-election bid, saying Bost is doing a “fantastic job.”

None of it has been enough to stop a far-right challenger from casting Bost as the epitome of a RINO—forcing the incumbent into a brutal political dogfight ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.

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Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2022, is arguing that Illinois’ most conservative district needs the most MAGA possible representative.

On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast last week, Bailey told the former Trump strategist that Bost “will not stick his neck out like you, and like Mike Lindell, because obviously these people are career politicians, they’re concerned about the next election cycle.” Bannon, for his part, hyped up his guest’s opponent as “one of the worst, as bad as they come,” calling Bost a “mini-McCarthy” and fixating on reports that he had threatened to punch “our own” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). (On top of regularly guest-hosting the War Room podcast, Gaetz has traveled to Bost’s district to campaign for Bailey.)

With his résumé, Bost would have been all but immune to a challenge from his right in years past. Since he was elected in 2014, in fact, he’s only faced one other primary challenge—in 2018, when he won by nearly 70 points.

But 2024 is poised to be a very different election year, one in which no House Republican is safe, no matter how MAGA they may be.

At least 21 House Republican incumbents are facing primary challenges from candidates who are seriously campaigning and raising at least some funds, according to a Daily Beast review of campaign filings and other materials.

Three lawmakers have already survived, but by slim margins. In March 5 primaries, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Steve Womack (R-AR), and Jake Ellzey (R-TX) defeated underfunded MAGA challengers, but with less than 60 percent of the vote. Womack, a critic of hardline conservatives, won by just 7 points.

In a brief interview with The Daily Beast last week, Bost lamented what he saw as the driving factors behind many of these challenger campaigns: attention and purity tests.

“What that is is all about your own ego, and that’s the problem,” Bost said. “And they find like people that think like they do, and then try to drag them up against somebody that doesn’t think like they do.”

Some of the incumbents are familiar primary targets, like Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Don Bacon (R-NE), considered among the most centrist members of the GOP conference. Some are being challenged simply because they aren’t loud or combative enough—or even if they cast a vote in favor of funding the government, which is now a punishable offense in the MAGA base.

But many are as conservative and Trump-supporting as Bost, if not more so. Rep. William Timmons (R-SC), who has a 95 percent lifetime score from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is facing an aggressive primary challenge.

Some archconservatives are being targeted because they backed Ron DeSantis for president, like Reps. Bob Good (R-VA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), while others are being challenged in part because they didn’t support Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his bid for the House speakership last fall.

What nearly all of these incumbents have in common is that their opponents hail from the far-right fringes of the party. Where the incumbents are on Fox and Newsmax, the challengers are regulars on Bannon’s show, hoping to land endorsements from figures like Mike Lindell, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn.

One primary hopeful is a pro-gun YouTuber; another has based his campaign around having served prison time for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Far-right troll Laura Loomer, who came within 7 points of defeating Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) in 2022, is running again. Often lost in the noise from these ultra-MAGA figures is that their beloved party leader has endorsed their opponent.

That’s what’s so different about this primary cycle, say Republicans and election analysts.

“The threshold of what it takes to offend Republican primary voters has fallen lower,” said Dave Wasserman, the election expert and senior editor for U.S. House races at the Cook Political Report.

At this point, GOP strategist Ken Spain said, “many of the Republicans in the House have taken on a Trump-like persona, where you either fight to the death, or you’re simply not committed to the cause—and that’s what we’re seeing play out.”

Like in every election year, at least one of these challenges will almost certainly be successful. It’s possible many could lose, or 2024 could be a better year for incumbents than 2022, when five lost primary challenges in non-redistricting related races.

But the more important upshot of any member having to worry about a primary threat, no matter how marginal, may not be who wins—it may be how members adjust their behavior to survive.

Pointing to weak incumbent performances on March 5, Wasserman said, “the combined impact of those three outcomes will be a chilling effect on other Republican members who have been willing to speak out against Trump or vote for things that Trump doesn’t like.”

While Trump often put Republicans in a difficult position when they had to defend his near-daily controversies, he offered many of them something they desperately desired: a cheat code to avoid primary challenges.

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Republicans during the Trump era were largely measured by their support of Trump. Gone were the Heritage Action or Club for Growth scores to rank a Republican’s conservatism, or the need to collect endorsements from across the GOP spectrum, or even the need to spend considerable time in the district.

Republicans, by and large, only needed Trump’s endorsement to be considered sufficiently conservative and avoid a credible threat. That fealty of Republicans to Trump further reinforced his power in the party, and further exacerbated the transformation of the party into his image.

Even with Trump out of office for three years, his influence has been constant. What has changed, however, is just the number of anti-Trump—or, really, insufficiently pro-Trump—Republicans that are left in Congress.

With just about every Republican claiming the mantle of a ‘Trump Republican,’ being ‘pro-Trump’ might not be the same prophylactic that it once was against primary challengers. (If every Republican is pro-Trump, is anyone really pro-Trump?)

Combine it all with the dearth of successful challenges in recent years—which has just increased the internal tension in the party—and there’s a pressure cooker situation developing.

After a year that unleashed unprecedented internal animosity in the House GOP, members’ increased eagerness to campaign against their own colleagues is adding yet another layer of drama in a majority already ripped apart by it.

Gaetz, naturally, is a ringleader, having stumped for primary challengers to Bost and Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX). Timmons’ challenger, meanwhile, has been endorsed by a remarkable seven colleagues.

Many Republicans, of course, would rather see these members using their campaign time and resources working to protect and expand the House GOP’s increasingly slim majority instead of trying to replace conservative colleagues with even more conservative colleagues.

On the Democratic side of the aisle, the primary fever that helped put the left-wing “Squad” into office in 2018 and 2020 has abated. The most high-profile challenges to incumbents this cycle are from the center, not the left, targeting Squad-aligned Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). Meanwhile, just two members of the party’s center and center-left wing are facing viable primaries from progressives.

Occasionally, this frustration has emanated from the top of the House GOP. During House Republicans’ annual retreat last week, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) privately—and showing real frustration—admonished members who were campaigning against each other, a source familiar with his remarks told The Daily Beast.

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“I’ve asked them all to cool it,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive… So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off.”

In response to a question from The Daily Beast about primaries, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the fourth-ranking House Republican, declared her support for all GOP incumbents and urged members to work as a team.

“It’s a slim majority, and we need to make sure that everyone feels the support from their colleagues,” she said. “Even if you vote differently based upon your district, it's important to know that we've all heard the support of our constituents to be here.”

Perhaps more than any other primary fight, the one in West Virginia’s 1st District illustrates the singular dynamics at this fraught moment within the Republican Party.

The incumbent, Rep. Carol Miller, has represented this district since 2019. Trump won it by over 40 points in 2020. Miller voted to throw out Biden’s Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 and has been a Trump ally. But in general, she has quietly gone about her business in Congress, and has cast votes to keep the government open and avoid defaults on the national debt.

Miller’s opponent is Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state lawmaker who might be the purest expression of the MAGA id and political incentive structure on display anywhere in the country.

Evans’ proudest credential appears to be the fact that he was charged with crimes for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6. The high point of his campaign was Trump himself sharing Evans’ post on the Truth Social platform of their mugshots side by side. (In accepting a three-month prison sentence for his crimes in 2022, Evans expressed remorse.)

Now, the candidate’s feed on X is full of daily outrage bait. “White liberal women are the greatest threat to the future of our constitutional republic,” he posted recently. He has called for “arresting the people who stole the 2020 election.” He has been endorsed by QAnon favorite Michael Flynn and Trump acolyte Roger Stone. For some reason, he traveled to Delaware last Friday to give a speech about Joe Biden.

While he has dinged her for such offenses as appearing in a photo with Bill Gates, Evans has occasionally made a succinct case for his primary campaign. “My opponent,” Evans once tweeted, “is a total RINO representing an Ultra MAGA District.”

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Evans has also raised real money: over $290,000 in 2023, according to his Federal Election Commission filings. (Miller has raised just over $560,000.)

In a brief interview with The Daily Beast at the House GOP retreat last week, which took place in her district, Miller demonstrated how starkly different she is from her opponent.

"My mama told me not to say anything if I can't say anything nice,” Miller said. “I welcome people challenging me. His lack of experience is a little different to me. I’ve worked very hard the last six years. I represent my district well. I’ve listened to them, I’ve voted conservatively, and it’s been my honor to serve.” (Evans did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.)

There is another potent GOP primary dynamic adding to the 2024 chaos: incumbents who may face challenges stemming from their votes to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last year. The furious deposed leader has taken verbal potshots at the eight GOP lawmakers who ousted him, and he and his powerful allies are moving to hamper their re-election campaigns.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is considered one of the top targets, along with Rep. Good in Virginia. One of the McCarthy Eight, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), is not even seeking re-election, citing a personal smear campaign against him.

In Good’s 5th Congressional District of Virginia, all the strains of GOP drama converge. The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, it’s hard to get more conservative than Good. But he earned establishment enemies with his support for removing McCarthy—and earned enemies in the MAGA movement for his support of DeSantis for president.

His opponent is John McGuire, a Virginia state senator who has touted his support for Trump at every turn possible. Ahead of the June 18 primary, Good’s standing among primary voters is so poor that he was thrown out of a pro-Trump store in his district that had hosted an event for McGuire.

Massie, the Kentucky Republican, also was a prominent DeSantis backer, and his opponent has touted that as his No. 1 reason to dump the incumbent. But Massie has been here before; in 2020, Trump backed his primary challenger. He won easily anyway.

“This would be the third person who’s tried to run to the Trump of me, and that’s the only direction you can go where I might not be 100 percent in terms of the MAGA scorecard,” Massie told The Daily Beast.

But Massie acknowledged that not all of his colleagues have cultivated as strong a brand that lets them survive getting crosswise with Trump.

“If you’re not known in your district,” Massie said, a Trump endorsement could “cost you 10 points in your primary.”

“If somebody gets endorsed on the other side they can go up 10 points, and the other person could go down 10 points if they’re not very well defined in their district,” he said.

How Massie fares in his own state’s primary could show how acute the party’s MAGA angst really is. But he’s not sweating the challenge.

“People would rather I support the Constitution,” he said, “than any particular president.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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