Tensions in the Republican Party heightened as some GOP senators criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Wisconsin's Ron Johnson recently appeared on the radio show "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC-AM to discuss McConnell's recent support for the $1.66 trillion omnibus spending package that was passed in the House and Senate.
"Unfortunately, the arrogance of our [Senate GOP] leadership who said, 'We know better than House members. We're going to pass this,'" Johnson told the show's host, John Catsimatidis. "I'm not buying it. Unfortunately, our supporters aren't going to buy it either."
Utah's Mike Lee also took aim at GOP leadership, saying that it has "turned on Republican voters."
"Turned on the Republican base, turned on most Republican senators....It has happened before, but this is one too many times. For me, this is the final straw," Lee said.
The comments from Johnson and Lee come amid ongoing tension in the GOP following the passage of the omnibus bill and Representative Kevin McCarthy's bid to become House speaker.
McConnell was one of 18 Republicans who voted in favor of the spending package, which helped avoid a government shutdown. During a speech on the Senate floor last week, McConnell said, "if a truly bipartisan full-year bill without poison pills is ready for final Senate passage by late next week, then I'll support it—for our armed forces particularly."
Following his comments, McConnell received criticism from Republican such as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said, "Mitch McConnell is the reason Democrats are on the verge of passing a huge TRILLION dollar Democrat controlled Omnibus spending bill in the late hours of this lame duck session."
Former President Donald Trump called the spending package a "disaster for our country."
In addition to tensions over the omnibus bill, there has also been some Republican disagreement regarding support for McCarthy as House speaker.
Greene and Trump have already expressed support for McCarthy's bid, but other Republican representatives, like Florida's Matt Gaetz and Colorado's Lauren Boebert, have different opinions.
"I can't wait to vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but if Donald Trump believes that Kevin McCarthy should be speaker of the House, then Donald Trump is wrong," Gaetz said last week.
While speaking to The Daily Wire last week, Boebert spoke about Greene's support for McCarthy, saying, "I've been asked to explain MTG's belief in Jewish space lasers, why she showed up to a white supremacist's conference, and now why she's blindly following Kevin McCarthy, and I'm not going to go there."
Newsweek reached out to McConnell's office for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Matthew Impelli is a Newsweek staff writer based in New York. His focus is reporting social issues and crime. In ... Read more
