Conservative congressman’s departure exposes severe 'frustration' with GOP majority

15 March 2024

When Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colorado) announced that he wouldn't be seeking reelection in 2024, allies of the conservative congressman hoped he would still serve out the remainder of his term. But Buck decided against staying that long, and on March 12, Buck tweeted that he "will depart Congress at the end of next week."

In an opinion column published on March 14, MSNBC's Hayes Brown argues that there is no way to put a positive spin on Buck's decision — which, he laments, underscores the extreme "frustration" that Buck and other non-extreme Republicans are feeling with the House's GOP majority and their party's "MAGA wing."

"With 24 Democrats expected to leave their seats in January," Brown explains, "it'd be easy to think that the urge to ditch Congress cuts almost evenly across the aisle. But half of those Democrats are stepping down to run for another office. In comparison, Buck is one of 15 Republicans who are simply calling it quits…. As baffling as it may be to say, Buck, a longtime member of the Freedom Caucus, is leaving Congress as one of the more reasonable members of his party."

Brown adds, "His stepping down narrows the already minuscule majority that Republicans have. Until his seat is filled, the GOP will only be able to withstand two defections before an initiative falls in the face of a united Democratic caucus."

The MSNBC columnist laments that Buck's decision to leave the House early "highlights the frustration that many long-term GOP members feel about how deeply unproductive this Congress has been."

"Five of those stepping aside are powerful committee chairs, and only two of them face caucus-imposed term limits on their chairmanship," Brown observes. "This has prompted the entirely eye-roll-inducing complaint that 'Congress is broken' from the likes of departing House Homeland Security Chair Rep. Mark Green, R-N.C., despite decades of GOP disregard for legislating being a major cause of that brokenness."

Brown is critical of House Republicans who "have treated their moderate members in swing districts as afterthoughts" in order to "spend most of their time placating the MAGA wing of the party."

"The internal GOP chaos that Buck and others are escaping may be reduced — but only because there are even more hardliners willing to throw their weight around, bringing the rest of the caucus along with them," Brown notes. "It falls, then, on those members who remain, the task to hold the line against a potential increase in the ranks of newly sworn-in firebrands. It's a fight that I don’t envy for the few institutionalists who still call the GOP home."

Hayes Brown's full MSNBC column is available at this link.

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