Today’s post comes from Marty Cohen, Professor of Political Science at James Madison University and author of Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress: Cultural Conservatism and the House GOP, first published in hardcover in 2019 and newly available in paperback this year. Cohen’s book tells the story of the growing importance of moral issues in U.S. House elections, examining how Christian conservative activists worked to nominate friendly candidates and get them elected and how this resulted in a Republican House delegation that cared as much about abortion and gay rights as it did smaller government and lower taxes. In this post, Cohen brings this analysis to bear on how Donald Trump’s strain of conservatism has influenced the ideological make-up of the House GOP and on what this year’s election may mean for Trumpism in the next Congress.
When the majority in the House of Representatives changes, Americans notice. The Speaker of the House is replaced and the newly ascendant party takes control of all committees. We expect new policies to be passed or at least proposed. But what will those proposals look like? That depends on the composition of the new majority, and that is largely determined by relatively low-information party primaries that are barely noticed by the casual observer of politics. So it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Christian Right made inroads into the Republican House delegation. This process continued into the 2000s, producing a more morally traditional set of Republican members of Congress (MCs). I set out to chronicle this phenomenon in my 2019 Penn Press book Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress, now available in paperback. Five years later, we may be seeing a similar transformation taking place in the GOP. This one seems less about issues and more about fealty to one man: former president Donald Trump. As we approach the 2024 election, control of the House once again hangs in the balance. Regardless of which party holds the speaker’s gavel in January 2025, the Republican delegation could very well be even more loyal to Trump and even less willing to work with the Democrats to complete the most basic of governing tasks.
Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress contains a combination of empirical analysis and case studies in an attempt to convey the ways an insurgent group can infiltrate a major political party, and if not take it over, fundamentally alter its character. My focus was on U.S. House elections and the Republican delegation within that legislative chamber. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, the House GOP was geographically diverse and mostly concerned with economic issues. Very few Republican MCs espoused moral messages, largely ignoring issues like abortion, religion in the schools, and LGBTQ rights. Over the next thirty years, the House delegation transformed into one that was much more focused on those hot-button culture war issues we have become accustomed to in the current century. It also became much more Southern and much more conservative across the board.
The process I document was largely locally-based and bottom-up. I argue in the book that Christian conservative activists successfully sought power within the Republican Party at the grass roots level. At first, old guard Republicans who were protective of their turf and their brand resisted the intrusion. Religious activists motivated by moral issues like abortion persisted and took on their fellow Republicans in bitter primary battles across the country. After a few cycles, the two factions learned to coexist and their combined strength led to a Republican takeover of the House in 1994. The influx of new voters and new activists paved the way for new candidates to emerge. In 1980, just under 3% of Republican candidates for the House of Representatives espoused a morally traditional campaign message. By 2010, that number had increased to 23%. Furthermore, 34% of the incoming delegation in January 1981 represented Southern states. Thirty years later it was 45%. The upshot was a much more conservative group of Republican MCs, which can be measured using DW-NOMINATE scores, which are created by an ideological scaling technique that places lawmakers on a spatial map. The average first dimension DW-NOMINATE score of Republican lawmakers in the 97th Congress (1981-1983) was .307. In the 112th Congress (2011-2013) it had risen to .468. As a result, bitter battles over moral issues continue to play out and comprise the heart of the intensifying culture wars of this century.
In the midst of all this, Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, first as a birther provocateur and then as a Republican candidate for president. His ascension to the White House only intensified these culture wars and the partisan polarization already several decades in the making. Since Trump’s defeat in 2020, the former president has continued to solidify his hold on the Republican Party. Of particular interest here is his willingness to insert himself into Republican congressional politics to either reward devout supporters or punish apostates. How successful has he been? On January 6th, 2021, there were 213 Republican members of Congress who came to the Capitol to render their judgment on the 2020 presidential election. 74 voted to certify the results while 139 did not. According to these numbers, it is safe to say that at a minimum those 139, or 65.26%, of the GOP House delegation were fully committed to Donald Trump. They were true believers, and since then, Trump has targeted his perceived enemies on Capitol Hill and endorsed a new crop of true believers. When all the votes are counted this November, what will the GOP House delegation look like with respect to Donald Trump?
Using Cook Political Report’s seat ratings and its Partisan Voting Index, I can estimate the percentage of true believers that might be headed to Washington in January 2025. If we give the Republicans all 193 seats that have been deemed safe for the GOP, and add to that the 10 likely Republican, 7 leaning Republican, and 15 of the 22 toss up seats where the PVI favors the Republicans, we come to 225 Republican House members in place after the 2024 election. Of those 225, 99 are original true believers (those who voted not to certify the Trump-Biden election). In addition, 48 were endorsed by Trump at some point along the way. Considering how important loyalty is to Trump and how much he is fixated on the fraudulent nature of the 2020 contest, it is safe to say that these endorsed candidates also deserve to be considered true believers. Add it all up and 147 House Republicans out of a hypothetical 225, or 65.33% will essentially be in Trump’s pocket. Not exactly a major increase. And sure enough, if you dig deeper into some of these individual districts Trump’s record has been decidedly mixed. We all know about Liz Cheney and how Trump successfully targeted her for primary defeat in 2022. There was also Peter Meijer and Jaime Herrera Beutler, two Republican incumbents who voted to certify and were successfully primaried by Trump-endorsed candidates. However, only Cheney’s seat stayed in Republican hands. Furthermore, Trump tried and failed to denominate three other MCs who certified the results of the 2020 presidential election. We also all know about Adam Kinzinger’s well-documented retirement after certifying the election results in 2020. He was due to be redistricted with another Republican incumbent and instead chose to head to the airwaves to further prosecute the case against Donald Trump. A handful of other certifiers retired as well, but we are not talking about a mass exodus. Instead, when it comes to intense loyalty to Donald Trump the supposed incoming GOP House delegation will look almost identical to the one from four years earlier.
Of course, the preceding analysis of recent Republican House delegations is crude and basic. First of all, that 65% is probably a low estimate of those who are fully aboard the Trump Train. Secondly, it is folly to expect a major shift in only two electoral cycles driven solely by one man’s predilections. The Christian Right spent decades remaking the GOP House delegation in its own image. To the extent that the MAGA movement represents Donald Trump, it will likely take more time and a more concerted grass roots effort to fully transform the Republican congressional delegation. For some, that will be cold comfort if the Republicans end up controlling the White House and both legislative chambers come the new year. That result surely would turbocharge the effort to consolidate Trumpism beyond the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and once again result in a radically different Republican House delegation.
