“Make it make sense. You can’t.”: GOP infighting erupts after House hardliners push for shutdown

GOP infighting in the House killed a Republican bill aimed at avoiding a seemingly impending government shutdown on Friday.

21 Republican hardliners joined Democrats in opposing the legislation in a 232-198 tally. The failed vote represents another significant defeat for Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., whose attempts to unite the conference on government funding legislation, including a partisan stopgap bill aimed at giving the GOP greater leverage in negotiations, have repeatedly fallen flat. 

The list of the bill’s far-right opponents included Reps. Dan Bishop, N.C., Lauren Boebert, Colo., Ken Buck, Colo., Tim Burchett, Tenn., Matt Gaetz, Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ga. The measure — whose defeat raises the potential for a government shutdown to go into effect Saturday night — had advanced in a party-line vote earlier Friday, although it would not have passed in the Senate where Democrats would be poised to vote it down. The White House also issued a veto threat against the bill Friday morning. 

Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas, expressed frustration with the bill’s failure online Friday, lamenting how the legislation’s defeat also smacked down the party’s border security bill.

“It was a hardline stance that focused our efforts on the border, and yet these 21 took it down,” Crenshaw wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “You can’t justify this. And yet, they’re sending out fundraising emails as we speak, telling you that the rest of us who took a hardline on border security are the RINOS,” he continued, referencing the acronym for the pejorative “Republican in Name Only.” Crenshaw added, “Make it make sense. You can’t.”

Members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Matt Gaetz, R-Fl., however, appeared to stand firm in their stances and decisions to vote against the bill.

“The new CR they are championing literally weakens our tough border position we added 13 hours ago,” Burchett tweeted of the legislation. “@SpeakerMcCarthy – Don’t you see? Biden is daring us to pass all of our single subject appropriations bills,” Gaetz, one of McCarthy’s most vocal critics, said in response to the White House’s jab at the speaker. “Let’s keep passing them! It just requires you to come out of your CR Fever Dream. Individual bills. No CR. Get with the program.”