GOP infighting 'coming to a head' as Trump’s allies gear up for a fierce battle

03 May

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on April 17, 2023 (Lev Radin/Shutterstock.com)

In 2025, President Donald Trump is to the Republican Party what the late President Ronald Reagan was during the 1980s: its most prominent figure and hands-down leader. Yet Trump has a radically different governing style from Reagan, who famously said that someone who agreed with him 70 percent of the time was a 70 percent ally rather than a 30 percent enemy.

Reagan joked that the "11th Commandment" was "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Trump, in contrast, is known for raging against any Republicans who dare to disagree with him.

But the fact that so many GOP lawmakers and governors are terrified of offending Trump doesn't mean that the Republican Party is one big happy family.

In his May 3 column, Slate's Jim Newell takes a look at some of the infighting the GOP is experiencing during Trump's second presidency.

According to Slate, an "intraparty battle" over Medicaid "has been brewing for some time" and is now "coming to a head."

A group of House Republicans in swing districts are saying that they won't vote for any cuts to Medicaid, whereas Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) remains a staunch budget hawk.

Newell explains, "Congressional Republicans have reached the moment they've been waiting for — writing up their sprawling bill to enact Trump's legislative agenda — and are, at this moment, stuck. They can't settle on a way to enact hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts that doesn’t scare the crap out of both moderate members and Trump. On SNAP benefits, another major target for cutting, they're running into the same issue. It raises the question: Why are they forcing themselves to spin their wheels like this? They could find a way to get their tax cuts through accounting tricks or less controversial cuts. That's what the Senate will end up doing, anyway."

GOP lawmakers want to pass the "big, beautiful bill" that Trump in calling for, but they have major disagreements over the specifics.

"The thing is, there are varying interpretations of the purpose of the 'one, big beautiful bill,'" Newell stresses. "The popular understanding is that Republicans want to renew trillions in tax cuts, and they need to find some spending cuts to lessen the deficit impact. But for conservatives, like Texas Rep. Chip Roy and other deficit hawks, the purpose of the bill is to rein in mandatory federal spending programs."

Newell continues, "They see this moment as a generational opportunity — perhaps the last they’ll get before a debt crisis hits — to do so…. There's been an intraparty battle brewing between those who view tax cuts as the point and those who view spending cuts as the point, and now, it's reaching a crescendo. We'd observe that the path of least resistance almost always wins in the end, which is why Roy is so distraught in the first place."

Read Jim Newell's full Slate column at this link (subscription required).

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