McCarthy's Shaky Leadership May Not Unravel MAGA Amid Greene, Boebert Feud

The intra-party feuding between Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert is an unexpected riff in the hard-right faction of the GOP, but their quarrel over who should be the next speaker of the House is unlikely to unravel the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, according to a political science professor.

This week, the congresswomen's disagreement over House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has spilled into public view in a series of fiery exchanges as the conservative firebrands slammed one another for their opposing positions.

Greene has endorsed McCarthy for House speaker, arguing that the party needs to rally behind a leader in order to effectively govern when Republicans take control of the House in January. Boebert, on the other hand, has said she "doesn't believe" in McCarthy's ability to lead the caucus and that she wouldn't vote for him unless a mechanism to remove McCarthy is restored.

The split has caught political observers off guard, but an expert says the dispute over the speakership isn't enough to break down MAGA in Congress.

"It is interesting to see infighting in a group that you don't see infighting among very often," Michael Lynch, political science professor at the University of Georgia, told Newsweek. "But this really seems to be tactical, strategy differences as opposed to any kind of policy differences or bigger picture differences on what Congress should be doing the next two years."

On Monday, Boebert told the Daily Caller that Greene was "blindly following Kevin McCarthy" and poked fun at Greene's controversial statements on her so-called "Jewish space laser" theory. In response, Greene said she was devoted to "save America" and "not high school drama and media sound bites."

Greene has tried to poke holes in McCarthy's critics by saying that those members of Congress "do not have a plan and there is no consensus candidate." Representative Andy Biggs, who chairs the conservative Freedom House Caucus, is challenging McCarthy for the speakership.

But while Greene has accused her Republican colleagues who don't want to back McCarthy of "sabotaging the country for personal reasons," she and Boebert, or any other far-right conservative lawmaker, are aligned for the most part on their views when it comes to Republican policy.

"This is anti-establishment Republicans trying to decide who to be loyal to," Lynch said.

Nonetheless, the infighting has granted Boebert and other McCarthy dissenters political leverage.

Because McCarthy needs an outright majority of the House to become the next speaker—and with Republicans currently holding 222 seats—any five Republicans have the ability to prevent him from being the top GOP leader, the University of Miami's Gregory Koger explained.

Even Greene complained that with too many moderate Republicans in the House conference, "it's IMPOSSIBLE for a conservative to get 218 votes," concluding that it's "not only selfish, [but] incredibly reckless and dangerous" to cast doubt on McCarthy.

"Some Freedom Caucus members would prefer a different candidate more to their liking, or to extort concessions from McCarthy, such as allowing a motion to vacate the Speakership at any time," Koger told Newsweek.

"It gives them a lot of power to have that role," Lynch added.