Trump Loyalists Face Off To Lead A Decimated House Gop

House Republicans are responding to the resounding rebuke of their party by launching headlong into a leadership contest where neither candidate appears willing to break with the person congressional Republicans most blame for the sweeping midterm losses: President Donald Trump.

Both Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise are known to their colleagues as close Trump allies, and neither indicated they intend to put any daylight into their relationships with the president in their initial statements declaring their intention to run for minority leader.

Jordan, the longtime conservative brawler and sitting Judiciary chair, pledged to push back on Democratic excesses including “investigating every facet of the Administration and private entities across the country.”

Scalise, the current majority leader and a fixture of GOP leadership for more than a decade, also raised the prospect of pushing back against Democratic investigations and a possible Trump impeachment while telling colleagues that the president needed a “tested negotiator working alongside him to secure administration priorities.”

Those pledges to fight Democrats on Trump’s behalf came at the same time that other members were musing both publicly and privately about the president’s rapidly waning influence — and the imperative for lawmakers to start taking steps to craft a political future without him in it.

“Let’s start being a separate branch of government,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is retiring at the end of the year, said in a text message about the election. “We’re not an appendage of the White House.”

Few House Republicans expect Scalise or Jordan to publicly break with Trump, which would be wildly out of character for either of them. Scalise traveled with the president during the final days of the midterm campaign season, and Jordan rose from a hard-right rabble-rouser to a cable-news fixture in part by embracing Trump.

Trump, for his part, said Wednesday he’s not planning to weigh in on the upcoming GOP leadership race that erupted immediately after Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would step aside as top House Republican in the next Congress.

“We’ll stay out of it,” Trump said. “All good people. I guess right now you have two candidates, right?”

Candidates in other House GOP leadership races similarly did not mention the need for the party to chart an independent course, but most stressed party unity and prioritizing members’ nuts-and-bolts concerns.

Members, meanwhile, spent Wednesday talking privately among themselves about the historic electoral wipeout — which could see Democrats win 260 seats, more than they’ve had since the early 1990s — and Trump’s role in bringing it about.

Trump responded to the loss by arguing Republicans simply do not vote if he is not on the ballot — cold comfort for lawmakers who will never appear on a ballot with Trump again.

A House Republican, one of several granted anonymity to speak candidly about the president and the upcoming leadership race, predicted many members would start creating distance from the president “quickly” upon their return to Washington as they come to terms with a post-Trump future.

“I’ve been totally wrong on that before,” the member added. But “I just don’t see how any amount of contorting can polish up this turd.”

Another GOP lawmaker lamented that Trump had not gotten more honest feedback from fellow Republicans sooner.

“They didn't call him out on things they didn't like, over fear of retribution,” the member said. “And that's a real problem.”

It’s an open question whether Jordan or Scalise would be equipped to do that. Jordan, a founder of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus, pitched himself in a letter to colleagues as an expert in combating the hard-nosed investigations that Democrats are pledging to launch into Trump and other targets.

“I am battle-tested on the oversight front and I know the Democrats' playbook,” Jordan said in a letter to colleagues. “I know what it will take to lead our Conference in the minority, to stay unified, and to coordinate and calibrate our response to the Democrats' tactics.”

Underscoring his support on the right, Jordan won an endorsement from the leader of the hard-line Club for Growth Wednesday. David McIntosh, a former House Republican, called Jordan “principled, politically savvy, [a] prolific fundraiser, and the best communicator” for the House GOP.

Scalise, whom many members see as the more moderate option, emphasized his past fundraising and legislative efforts and focused on the battle to regain the House majority — calling it his “number one goal as Republican leader.”

A third House Republican noted Scalise has to walk a fine line between being a known quantity and part of a leadership team that stayed tied to Trump’s hip.

“If people are looking for the steady hand, again, I think he's a guy to watch,” the member said. "But we got our asses kicked. And are they going to blame Scalise for that or the president? … Johnson already did, but does his first mate have to walk the plank, too?"

In his letter, Scalise called on House Republicans to “stand united as one team, be smart and strategic to secure conservative policy wins where we can, closely coordinate our defense against aggressive oversight and together develop a clear vision and agenda to earn back the majority in 2028.”

But as the prospect of having to turn 40 or more seats sunk in on Wednesday, Republicans took stock of whether the majority would be back in reach in two years.

A fourth GOP lawmaker said the goal of 2028 flip was not “realistic” and said Republicans were better-served to adopt a battle posture as Democrats threaten investigations and impeachments. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the likely incoming Oversight chair, told targets Tuesday night to “lawyer up.”

“Is there somebody better built for that than Jim Jordan?” the Republican said.