GOP seeks to unite warring factions ahead of tough legislative fights

House GOP leaders set to embark on their annual issues conference in West Virginia this week face a daunting task: uniting their warring factions ahead of a series of high-stakes legislative battles at the very root of the party’s infighting.

The annual retreat, at the swanky Greenbrier resort in remote White Sulphur Springs, will offer Republicans a chance to reset after a chaotic year marked by internal bickering — and the first ouster of their Speaker in history — while sharpening their strategy ahead of November, when the party is hoping to expand its House majority and take control of the Senate and White House.

The roster of events for the retreat includes topics regarding “Biden’s Failed Foreign Policy,” “Battling Bidenomics” and “Putting American Families First” — all of them designed to carve distinctions between GOP priorities and those of the unpopular president heading into the elections.

In the short term, however, Congress is barreling into several hot-button legislative fights sure to strain the Republicans’ unity campaign, including an effort to send additional military aid to Ukraine and another to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of next week. 

Both issues have been at the center of the conference’s internal clashes throughout the 118th Congress — and both will challenge Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership colleagues as they seek to rally their troops behind a shared strategic vision during their annual escape-the-Beltway retreat.

Adding to their burden, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) stunned Washington on Tuesday when he announced he’s resigning from Congress at the end of next week — rather than retiring at the end of the year, as initially planned — a move that will slim the House GOP’s already thin majority even further.

“This place is dysfunctional,” Buck told CNN in an interview after his announcement. “This place has just evolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.”

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority leader, acknowledged the internal divisions heading into the conference, but also voiced confidence that Republicans will come out more united on the other side. 

“The main focus will be making sure we stay united through the rest of this year and get done the things we want to achieve in these next few months,” Scalise said.

They have their work cut out.

The Ukraine issue has sharply divided Republicans, setting Reagan-minded traditionalists who support strong foreign intervention against a large and growing bloc of isolationists, who have joined former President Trump in calling for Washington to focus more intently on domestic problems.

The debate has hounded Johnson, who says he supports more aid for Ukrainian forces suffering ammunition shortfalls, but has refused to bring a Senate-passed foreign aid package — which Trump has fiercely opposed — to the floor for a vote. Even Johnson’s GOP allies concede he’s in no easy spot.

“He’s in a very tough political position in our conference,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who’s fighting for more Ukraine aid, told reporters last week. “That’s no secret.” 

The budget debate poses a separate series of pitfalls.

Conservative Republicans have for months been pushing for steep spending cuts and conservative policy riders to accompany 2024 government funding. Those provisions are deemed non-starters by Democrats who control both the Senate and White House, and Johnson last week infuriated his right flank by pushing ahead with a bipartisan, six-bill spending package that left many of the hard-liners’ controversial riders on the cutting room floor.

Lawmakers are now staring down a March 22 deadline to pass the six remaining 2024 funding bills, marking the sixth time this Congress that members are up against a shutdown deadline. And some of the GOP conference’s more vocal spending hawks are vowing to fight for their conservative wish list — especially legislation that addresses the situation at the southern border.

“We’re not accepting status quo,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said. “When you look at the 12 billion [dollars] in earmarks and look at where they are, priorities are not here. So we’re going to continue to fight it, try to meet with Mike Johnson, tell him the hill to die on, per his comments, were the border.” 

The tranche of bills due next week cover thornier areas of the government — including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services — setting the stage of a high-stakes battle as lawmakers look to put the lid on government funding for the current fiscal year.

Heading into that debate, some hard-liners are openly acknowledging that they are essentially powerless to enact favored changes after Johnson worked with Democrats to avert a shutdown and, as a result, are starting to set their sights on 2025 funding. But, in another challenge to the GOP’s hope for a unified message, they’re not taking defeat quietly. 

“The Speaker’s made his choice, he’s chosen the uniparty and the defense establishment … and the American people are gonna be the losers as a result,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said this week. “We’ll continue to address our concerns and take those fights into the [fiscal 2025] cycle.”

One tool, however, does remain: the motion to vacate, which was the same mechanism that led to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) demise. Conservatives, though, say they are not ready to trigger that last-ditch option, which would almost certainly fracture the GOP conference, heighten tensions among members and lend fuel to Democratic charges that Republicans are ungovernable. 

“I have never wanted to go down that road — I didn’t want to go down that road with Kevin, I don’t want to go down that road with Mike,” Roy said last week. 

“But you are correct, it is a tool at our disposal.”