Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
- A more moderate House Republican takes a somewhat dim view of his hard-right colleagues' antics.
- In an interview, Rep. Dave Joyce said they often say crazy things just to raise money and gain fame.
- "It's like, you think that's crazy, hold my beer," said Joyce.
With the possibility of a government shutdown — and a vote to oust House Kevin McCarthy — growing ever more likely, one of the more moderate members of the House Republican conference has some thoughts on his hard-right colleagues' antics.
Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, the chairman of the Republican Governance Group, told POLITICO in an interview that some of his colleagues are incentivized to out-compete each other for who can make the most extreme and maximalist demands of government.
Joyce said that lawmakers like Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who's threatening to call for a vote on ousting McCarthy, may be driven by the prospect of increased campaign contributions.
"All of a sudden, you see that amounts to somebody like Gaetz [getting] all these personal contributions in small ways," said Joyce. "And it's like, 'you think that's crazy, hold my beer,' then the next one will get in line and say even crazier things."
Joyce isn't the only Republican who makes this type of argument. After Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden in June, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia dismissed the effort as a mere fundraising gambit.
The Ohio lawmaker, who's served in Congress since 2013, made a similar argument in reference to Mark Meadows, the former North Carolina lawmaker who helped found and chair the House Freedom Caucus before becoming former President Donald Trump's White House Chief of Staff.
While in Congress, Meadows led an effort in the House to "defund" the Affordable Care Act, eventually resulting in the 2013 government shutdown.
"It propelled some to fame," Joyce said of that year's shutdown. "Meadows, you know, that crowd, I mean, they went on to bigger things."
In the interview, Joyce says that he prefers the work of governing, including former bipartisan alliances with Democrats.
"I hope and pray — that is one of the reasons I've stuck around here — that we're finally going to get back to that idea that bipartisanship works," said Joyce. "It sets in place things that last over time."