Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina gave her Republican colleagues a reality check, expressing deep frustrations with the state of GOP leadership in Congress.
Mace penned an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday criticizing the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill, calling out Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) by name.
'Here’s a hard truth Republicans don’t want to hear.'
Mace conceded that Johnson is a better choice than former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), whom she voted to oust back in 2023, but argued that the most effective congressional leader is actually on the opposite side of the political spectrum.
"Speaker Mike Johnson is better than his predecessor," Mace said. "But the frustrations of being a rank-and-file House member are compounded as certain individuals or groups remain marginalized within the party, getting little say."
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Mace said Republicans don't take women in office seriously, implying that the conference chair position was a slot informally reserved for the "token" female in GOP leadership.
"Women will never be taken seriously until leadership decides to take us seriously, and I’m no longer holding my breath," Mace said. "Since 2013, the Republican conference chair position has gone to a woman. It’s the token slot, the designated leadership role for the top woman in the conference, while the real power lies in other offices."
One woman Mace admitted was a force to be reckoned with is former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose leadership style Mace deemed more effective than that of the GOP.
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"Here’s a hard truth Republicans don’t want to hear: Nancy Pelosi was a more effective House speaker than any Republican this century," Mace said. "I agree with her on essentially nothing. But she understood something we don’t: No majority is permanent."
"When Democrats hold the majority, they ram through the most progressive policies they can. They deliver for the coalition that elected them while they are in power.
"Republicans do the opposite. ... We pass the most moderate policies we can pressure conservatives to accept, betraying the coalition that delivered us here," Mace continued.
"Ms. Pelosi was ruthless, but she got things done."
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Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned that political breakups might become more commonplace in the Republican Party.
McCarthy's prediction comes after Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced that she will retire from the House in January before finishing her congressional term. This announcement followed a public falling-out with longtime ally President Donald Trump.
'I've found Marjorie to be very effective.'
Despite being one of Trump's most loyal supporters on Capitol Hill, Greene said their falling-out was over her commitment to releasing the Epstein files, which the White House later supported. Other reports suggested that the split came after the White House squashed Greene's political aspirations beyond the House of Representatives.
"She's leaving Congress, but I don't think that's the end that you'll see about her," McCarthy said.
RELATED: Marjorie Taylor Greene calls it quits after 'traitor' branding by Trump
"I've always believed that any time you have an elected official that's known by three initials, they're effective on what they do," McCarthy added. "And I've found Marjorie to be very effective."
McCarthy, who is all too familiar with having one's political career cut short by MAGA world, said Greene's resignation may be the first of many unless Congress changes course.
"She's almost like a canary in a coal mine," McCarthy said. "And this is something inside Congress. They better wake up, because they're going to get a lot of people retiring, and they gotta focus."
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McCarthy also noted that the infighting ultimately takes away from a very small window of time in which Republicans hold the ultimate political advantage: a trifecta majority.
"I think keeping members out of Congress, you only get two years to be in the majority," McCarthy said. "And if the Democrats get you not to work every day for two months, that's losing two months of the majority."
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Earlier this month, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement after nearly four decades of public service. As Democrats say goodbye to one of their last remaining operatives to actually effectuate change, the party is left directionless.
The extent of Democratic leadership has now been reduced to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Both figures have repeatedly struggled to balance the progressives and the establishment moderates, with the most recent shutdown fiasco serving as a prime example.
'We all need to take a very big dose of humility.'
Onlookers on both sides of the aisle largely agree that the undisciplined messaging and disorganized strategy would never have taken place when Pelosi held the gavel.
With no obvious leader to follow in Pelosi's footsteps, the Democratic Party has become more undisciplined and rudderless than ever before.
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“She's an all-time great speaker because all other tools that speakers had to discipline or motivate legislators were not available to her," said Dheeraj Chand, a Democratic strategist and pollster with Siege Analytics, of Pelosi.
"She has no whip. She has no carrot. All that she has left is persuasive power, and she held that entire group of imbeciles together using nothing but persuasive power," Chand told Blaze News. "No small feat."
The latest instance of intraparty insubordination took place when 23 House Democrats chose to rebuke one of their own. The unusual reprimand came after Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois was censured by nearly all Republicans and several Democrats, with Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington authoring the condemnation.
Garcia, a retiring Democrat, was censured after he set up his chief of staff to be the lone Democrat on the primary ballot to succeed him in his deep-blue district, a move which Gluesenkamp Perez called "election subversion."
"Both parties are finding it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to lead their respective caucuses in the traditional hierarchical manner," Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, told Blaze News. "We see the example with Representative Garcia as emblematic of the challenges that Democrats face with breakaway members, and we saw during the attenuated leadership tenure of Kevin McCarthy how virtually impossible it is for establishment Republicans to contain the Freedom Caucus."
"When there's no leader, it's not only that there's no opinion, but there's nobody calling the shots," Chand told Blaze News. "When there's nobody calling the shots, it's hard to feel like you are playing for a team that can protect you."
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In both cases, neither party had a political north star to follow. With former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, President Donald Trump's command of the party slipped away after former President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election. In the case of Democrats today, the party is still on the back foot following the colossal electoral rebuke they endured in November 2024 after Kamala Harris stepped in to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.
Some party moderates still believe that "a lot of Democratic voters didn't come out because they were appalled at the vice president just getting to step in for the president, even though that was her job! Another perceived coronation, from her eyes, is just going to exacerbate the brand problem," Chand suggested.
"Without a leader, every legislator is responding to what they think is the reason for the loss," he told Blaze News.
“The Republican leadership chain is much more vertical and much more linear because the party is still led by Donald Trump," Foxwell told Blaze News. "It is still absolutely Donald Trump's party, and Mike Johnson toes the Donald Trump line, period full stop. It's easy when you have an outsized leader at the top to set the substance, the tone, and the stylistic direction of the party."
"We don't have that, and we haven't had it in more than a decade, even with the four-year interim with Joe Biden," Foxwell added. "He was not what one would consider a strong party leader.”
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The shortcomings of the directionless Democratic Party culminated on November 4, 2024, when Trump swept all seven swing states and secured impressive electoral gains across nearly every demographic.
"Exit polls are something like tabular tarot cards — you see what you want to see in them. They reveal more about you than they do the world," Chand told Blaze News. "It's unreasonable to rely on them too much, but post-election surveys are very, very revealing. This kind of loss is a catastrophe that is decades in the making. It's bigger than one candidate in 100 days or one term. We lost share with everyone except affluent white people. That's a Reagan-level defeat [over Walter Mondale], for similar reasons."
"Right now our party is in the midst of one of its periodic transitions in which the establishment wing is in a battle for primacy with its progressive insurgent wing. It's taking on philosophical overtones, but also generational ones," Foxwell told Blaze News. "It's not just that the old-school leadership represented by Pelosi was perhaps philosophically out of sync with some of these younger, more progressive insurgents, but she also came from a different generation."
While Republicans comfortably dominate the political landscape, Democrats are trying to find their own identity. New York progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have emerged as rising stars in their party and as a rebuke to establishment figures like Schumer and even Pelosi. Other figures, like Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and even failed candidate Kamala Harris, seem to be scoping out the competition.
Even with a range of politicians to choose from, the first step Democrats need to take is zoom out and understand their electoral failures.
"Nobody sees this coming," Chand told Blaze News. "I think we're going to lose until we win. And when people figure out what it takes, we will win. I think we all need to take a very big dose of humility."
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The mainstream media is pointing the finger at Republicans in the aftermath of the horrific assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Kirk was shot and killed at the Utah Valley University campus on Wednesday during the first stop of his highly anticipated college campus tour. Kirk was rushed to a nearby hospital, where the 31-year-old later passed away, leaving behind his wife, Erika, and their two beautiful children.
'Is this a moment for your party to reflect on political violence?'
Less than 24 hours later, CBS host Nate Burleson made a classless insinuation that Republicans are to blame for the atrocity, asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) if his party should "reflect on political violence" following Kirk's murder. At the same time, Burleson took it upon himself to remind the audience of Kirk's "offensive" rhetoric.
"Not everyone took to his words or his rhetoric," Burleson said. "You know, at times, they were offensive to specific communities. But with that said, this is not the time to focus on that. We are focused on this tragedy."
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"Speaking of this tragedy, is this a moment for your party to reflect on political violence?" Burleson asked McCarthy.
"Is it a moment for us to think about the responsibility of our political leaders and their voices and what it does to the masses as they get lost in misinformation or disinformation that turns in and spills into political violence?" Burleson reiterated.
McCarthy rejected Burleson's premise that Republicans are to blame. Another panelist interjected, "I say both parties."
"I don't even say parties; I say a nation," McCarthy responded.
"We have watched this political attack on both sides," McCarthy said. "We've watched what happened in Minnesota. We watched what happened to President Trump. We've watched this on both sides. This is not a question about parties; this is a question about nations."
"We cannot normalize this," McCarthy added. "But Charlie was not elected."
CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
RELATED: New York Times continues SPLC demonization of Charlie Kirk, accuses him of provocation
Burleson was not the only media talking head to pin the blame on Republicans. During the live coverage of the horrific assassination, MSNBC host Matthew Dowd seemingly blamed Kirk because he was "divisive."
Dowd said, “He’s been one of the most divisive — especially divisive younger figures — in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups.
"And I always go back to: Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that's the environment we're in. ... You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we're in.”
After Dowd's remarks aired, MSNBC's public relations account on X issued a statement disavowing the host, and the network later fired him.
“During our breaking news coverage of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, Matthew Dowd made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable," MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler said in the statement. "We apologize for his statements, as has he. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise."
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President-elect Donald Trump formally endorsed Mike Johnson for a second term as speaker of the House on Monday.
Following the tumultuous spending fight at the end of the 118th Congress, Johnson's speakership was called into question, with several Republican lawmakers signaling their frustration with the speaker. As Republicans head into the 119th Congress with an even narrower majority than before, even just a handful of defections could delay or even throw off Johnson's chances.
'Mike Johnson is the next Paul Ryan,' Massie said. 'On January 3rd, 2025, I won’t be voting for Mike Johnson. I hope my colleague will join me because history will not give America another "do-over."'
While many within the Republican conference were left frustrated with Johnson's handling of the last-minute continuing resolution, Trump's 11th-hour endorsement may be the boost he needs to remain speaker.
"The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration," Trump said in Truth Social post on Monday. "Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!"
"Thank you, President Trump!" Johnson said in response to Trump's endorsement. "I’m honored and humbled by your support, as always. Together, we will quickly deliver on your America First agenda and usher in the new golden age of America. The American people demand and deserve that we waste no time. Let’s get to work!"
Although he earned Trump's favor, Johnson can afford to lose only one Republican vote in the upcoming Congress. As of this writing, there is exactly one GOP lawmaker who has publicly stated that he will not be voting for Johnson.
"On January 3rd, 2017 Paul Ryan was elected Speaker by every Republican except me," Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said in a Monday post on X. "Ryan went on to offer a fake repeal of ObamaCare, increased spending, backed the deep state, and didn’t fund a wall. Two years later we lost the majority and democrats made a living hell for Trump."
"Mike Johnson is the next Paul Ryan," Massie said. "On January 3rd, 2025, I won’t be voting for Mike Johnson. I hope my colleague will join me because history will not give America another 'do-over.'"
While Massie has vocally expressed his opposition to Johnson, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is reportedly exploring other options just days before the Friday floor vote.
Roy is circling back to a former speaker candidate and a favorite among House conservatives, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. After former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted in October 2023, Jordan launched his bid for the gavel, ultimately coming up roughly 20 votes short.
Although Johnson has had an uphill battle during his speakership, Trump's endorsement will likely improve his chances of securing his re-election on Friday.
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Singer Cyndi Lauper once encouraged her fans to not “be afraid” to let their “true colors” shine. Since the terrible assassination of conservative thought leader Charlie Kirk, America’s propaganda media have taken that advice to heart. Case in point: former NFL player and now-CBS Mornings co-host Nate Burleson, who couldn’t help but gaslight Republicans about […]
Why do I fight on? Because if I lose, every senior White House advisor will face the same Hobson’s Choice I did: honor the Constitution and risk prison, or bend the knee to partisan inquisitors and betray the republic.
House Republican leaders want to raid Medicare to provide an extra $2.1 billion for an Obamacare-created program.
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