Can Republicans even play this game?

The opening days of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have been inauspicious at best. A contentious Republican Party took 15 ballots before reluctantly confirming Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as Speaker of the House. But McCarthy’s victory came with a huge price tag: Far right Republicans were empowered to chair major committees; George Santos was seated because McCarthy desperately needed his vote; and McCarthy allowed one member to call for vacating his Speakership at any given moment.

From there, it only got worse. While President Biden was delivering his State of the Union Address, McCarthy was shushing his heckling Republican caucus, looking like an exasperated kindergarten teacher. A chief offender was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who shouted “Liar!” at the president, an image that hardly played well with the suburban voters Republicans desperately need in 2024.

Returning to the White House after the speech, Biden’s staffers were exultant. An ebullient Ron Klain called the president’s rejoinders to the hecklers an “all-time great State of the Union moment that people would look back on for years.” A poll taken after Biden’s address found 54 percent saying members of Congress who disagreed with Biden should have remained silent.

When not jeering, Republicans were applauding at the wrong moment. One such outburst came when Biden chided those Republicans who want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains popular measures like reducing insulin prices to $35 for seniors and capping prescription drug costs at $2,000 per year. His response to their cheers was a well-rehearsed Bidenism, “As my football coach used to say, lots of luck in your senior year.” Biden likewise chided Republicans for voting on a measure imposing a 23 percent sales tax on goods and services — an unpopular measure that McCarthy opposes but was another concession needed to win the Speakership.  

Biden came to Capitol Hill ready to play. When Biden criticized Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years (including Social Security and Medicare), Republicans howled in protest. After getting Republicans to concede that reductions to Social Security and Medicare were off the table, Biden’s call to “stand up for seniors” was deft.

But where have Republicans been? For months, Biden denounced Scott’s plan to sunset Social Security and Medicare. In August, he brandished a copy of Scott’s brochure, saying, “Your Social Security, every five years, will be eliminated unless it’s voted back into existence.” Scott’s plan received lusty boos, with one audience member shouting, “That’s our money!” Things have gotten so bad that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) violated Ronald Reagan’s 11^th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican,” and took Scott to the woodshed. McConnell, who knows something about politics, called Scott’s plan “a bad idea,” adding, “I think it will be a challenge for him to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida.” McConnell then delivered the coup de grace, removing Scott from his seat on the Senate Commerce Committee.

Then there is George Santos. Santos has lied about nearly everything, including his education, claiming his mother was at the World Trade Center on 9/11, courting wealthy donors by allegedly having a campaign staffer impersonate Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff and even lying about his name. Santos made a spectacle of himself at the State of the Union, prompting an outraged Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to reprimand him. Every day brings another media spectacle about the fabulist who is quickly becoming the face of the Republican Party.

Adding to their woes is the Republican Party’s hyperbolic focus on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Newsflash: Most voters don’t care much about the president’s son’s foibles, but they do care about themselves. A CNN poll finds just 27 percent think House Republicans have the right priorities, while 73 percent believe they are not giving enough attention to the country’s most important problems. Measures easing inflation, cutting medical costs, eliminating junk fees and providing jobs gives families, as Biden says, a little bit of “breathing room.”

Polling bears out Biden’s maxim: 76 percent support his plan to reduce service fees for entertainment events and eliminate fees charged by cell phone, cable television and internet providers when consumers cancel their service.

The Republican emphasis on cultural issues resonates with their base but pales in contrast to voters’ economic worries. It is this base-oriented politics that gets Republicans in trouble. In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) offended congressional sensibilities by shouting, “You lie!” when President Obama addressed Congress about his health care proposal. Sitting at home, Wilson’s wife wondered “what nut” had violated the decorum associated with such occasions. But Wilson raised a quick $1 million, a phenomenon likely not lost on Greene, who has become a fundraising powerhouse in her own right.

Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn politics appeals to his ardent admirers. But Republican losses in 2018, 2020 and 2022 clearly show that Trump’s modus operandi is not a winning strategy.

For months, Joe Biden has signaled his plans to campaign for reelection by focusing on real-life concerns of everyday voters. The State of the Union Address gave Biden his biggest audience to date, many hearing for the first time what Biden has been saying for months. Republicans should have come prepared. They didn’t. Instead of addressing inflation, crime and immigration, Republicans are intent on reigniting the culture wars.

Responding to Biden, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-Ark.) accused him of “surrendering his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.” Fifty-four percent called Sanders’s address extreme, compared to the 41 percent who described Biden’s speech that way. Sanders framed the coming election as a choice between normal and crazy. But with Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos becoming the faces of today’s Republican Party, normal versus crazy is a choice Democrats welcome.

A feisty Biden is ready to engage. But can Republicans even play this game?

John Kenneth White is a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. His latest book, co-authored with Matthew Kerbel, is “American Political Parties: Why They Formed, How They Function, and Where They’re Headed.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.