As Republican hardliners tossed Speaker Kevin McCarthy out of office and attempted to dictate his replacement, one word kept recurring in their complaints about existing GOP leaders: “uniparty.”
The term crystallizes an idea widespread on the MAGA right: that too many Republican politicians and especially leaders are, on key issues, aligned with Democrats and the Washington establishment, and working against Donald Trump and the right.
“Right now, we are governed by a uniparty that Speaker McCarthy has fused with Joe Biden and Hakeem Jeffries,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said last month, as McCarthy seemed set to keep the government funded and avoid a shutdown. This was the justification Gaetz gave for his push to oust McCarthy (though he may have had personal reasons as well). And since enough other House Republicans were dissatisfied with McCarthy’s handling of the spending battles, Gaetz succeeded.
One key outside ally for Gaetz was Steve Bannon, the former Trump aide and now commentator. Bannon frequently deploys the “uniparty” epithet, as he’d done for years. He’s long tried to purge the GOP of its more conventional members, replacing them with hardliners who will more loyally back Trump and far-right causes.
In many ways, the idea that Kevin McCarthy was indistinguishable from a Democrat seems self-evidently absurd. The two parties are deeply polarized and locked in seemingly eternal partisan warfare. The GOP has moved far to the right on abortion, immigration, trans rights, gun rights, environmental regulation, and other issues while backing Trump ever more fervently.
Indeed, “uniparty” is an exaggerated, sloppily conceived concept that’s often deployed as a way to blame the right’s own failures to achieve a conservative policy paradise on some sort of dastardly conspiracy against them by their own leaders.
And yet sometimes it’s not entirely off-base.
That’s because there are important issues where many Republican elites…
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