The Grand Old Party who was traditionally seen as the reaganite party of free markets, responsible public finances and limited government now is seen as the party of Donald Trump: Protectionist, populist and nativist. However there are still a wide range of ideological visions within the party, ranging from moderates to far-right conservatives organised in congressional caucuses, today we're gonna look at them:
The first one and most moderate faction is the Problem Solvers Caucus which isn't actually a republican caucus, it's formed by democrats and republicans alike. This one has been key in passing legislation during this Administration (since Biden has lacked a majority in the House), and, of course is the smallest republican faction (with only 29 representatives)
Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.) and Don Bacon (Neb.)
The second group is the Republican Governance Group this one is formed by traditionally moderate republicans (fiscally conservative and socially moderate/liberal), is also kinda small with 41 members, an important amount of its members also belong to the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
David Joyce (Ohio), Young Kim (Calif.), Blake Moore (Utah), David G. Valadao (Calif.)
The third group is the Republican Main Street Caucus with 67 members which fancies itself more conservative than, and is highly sensitive about being compared to, the Republican Governance Group, which is slightly less touchy about being called moderate.
The fourth and largest ideological group is the Republican Study Committee, this one is composed by 173 members and is socially and economically conservative but due to its massivity it ranges from more moderate members to radicals. It has been the leading faction within the party in the last 30 years.
Kevin Hern (Okla.), Steve Scalise (La.), Mike Johnson (La.), Jim Banks (Ind.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.)
The last and most conservative MAGA group is the Freedom Caucus which is made up of 35 members they are seen as obstructionists (even by other conservative republicans) and radicals.
Scott Perry (Pa.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Chip Roy, Warren Davidson (Ohio)
We can measure their ideological positions by using a measure called "DW-NOMINATE" which estimates each lawmaker’s ideology based on voting records and we can see that there's still a lot of ideological frictions within the GOP.
However there's a bigcontrast between the Democratic and Republican party internal factionalism: within the Democrats there's an even distribution between moderates/third way liberals and progressives/old school liberals, within the Republicans there's a moderate minority and an extremist majority.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/house-republican-five-families/
https://newrepublic.com/article/171386/house-republicans-five-families-mccarthy-marjorie-greene-mob
Posted by North_Ad7449