The White House said Thursday that the House Republicans’ conservative wing is preventing them from governing effectively.
“It certainly is easy to poke fun at the chaos,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, referring to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s unexpected decision to drop out of the race to succeed Speaker John Boehner. But the situation is serious, he said.
“Republicans have to make some decisions about how to lead their conference,” Earnest said.
Whoever ends up being the next speaker will face the same problems Boehner faced and the same that California’s McCarthy would have faced, Earnest said. The challenge is uniting a divided caucus, he said.
“There is a minority group of conservative politicians that places their own extreme ideology ahead of everything else,” Earnest charged. “And certainly ahead of effective governance of the country but also, as of today, ahead of effective governance of the House Republican caucus.”
The next speaker has to “either tame the forces of that small but vocal group of ideologues or buck up the mainstream, or at least more mainstream, majority within the House Republican Conference” and work with Democrats to do what is best for the country and not “insist on receiving 100 percent of everything they ask for,” Earnest said.
Too many House Republicans don’t vote their conscience but vote defensively to “insulate” themselves from their most conservative colleagues and aligned groups that encourage primary challengers, Earnest said.
“A majority of them voted to shut down the government,” Earnest said, adding that he does not think a majority of House Republicans actually believed that shutting down the government is good policy.
“They don’t have to sacrifice their principles” to govern the country, but since taking control of Congress in January, they have offered voters little evidence that they can run the nation, Earnest said.
