Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX): The True “Uniparty” is the “Far Left and the Far Right”

Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX-2), United States Representative & author of FORTITUDE: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage, joined the Guy Benson Show to discuss the latest news coming out of the House of Representatives surrounding the ousting of former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Crenshaw said that the true uniparty of the United States are the extremes of both parties, and that the actions by Republicans who sided with Democrats are “truly self-serving”. Listen to the full interview below.

Full interview:

Crenshaw had this to say about the motivations of the members of the GOP who sided with Democrats in the McCarthy vote:

“They simultaneously got in the way of (conservative spending bills) and then and then demanded punishment for leadership, not bringing them to the floor and finishing them. .. It is truly self-serving. I don’t believe for a second the claims about about purity or nobility, about, you know, changing the way Washington works and whatever other whatever other soundbite they say,. It’s just not true. “

Full Transcript:

Guy Benson: Joining us now, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, the second Congressional District in the Lone Star State. His book is Fortitude. And Congressman, welcome back to the show.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Hey, thanks for having me.

Guy Benson: All right. Let’s talk about what happened yesterday. We were covering it in real time here on the program. You were living it in real time as a member. Before we get to what comes next. Let’s talk about what just happened, how we got to the point where the Republican speaker of the House was ousted by eight Republicans and all the Democrats. And what do you think that says about the health of the Republican majority right now?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Well, the long story, how much time they have, how this happened, I think, put simply, is personal animosity between a handful of members and Kevin McCarthy that has been longstanding. I think to be honest, um, and they don’t say that out loud. They’ll say it privately, but out loud. They won’t say it out loud. What they say or what they what they create are elicit impossible circumstances for him to operate under. And what they well, somebody they skillfully created. But I think it was clumsily created and fairly obvious to anyone who is on the inside here watching but not so obvious and on the outside. Why is it in the last week during the, you know, the negotiations for a continuing resolution to defund the government created an impossible circumstance for the speaker and this is how it went down. They voted in 21. Republicans voted with Democrats to take down the most conservative possible stopgap funding measure the government could imagine. Which is it with a full border security bill, H.R. two 30% cuts in non-defense discretionary spending. It is this massive, massive, sweeping change that would have no chance in the Senate. So it’s like the most conservative place that you can plant your flag. And they still voted against it and called everybody else a rhino. So you’re not working with these people at this point. And then so that forces the speaker to put down a continuing resolution on the floor the next day before the government shut down. And members of the military don’t get paid. Our Border Patrol, don’t get paid. There’s a lot of consequences to that. And then they attack him for it and punish him for it and say that he’s working with Democrats. And that’s exactly what they were doing. It’s… That’s what happened. And so the question going forward is whoever the next speaker is, how can they operate in those set of circumstances? And they can. So there’s going to be some demands for change on that front.

Guy Benson: The claim, at least from the defenders of some of these folks, is that it was a simple ask. All they wanted was regular order and single item spending bills. And McCarthy made promises and he didn’t keep them. I don’t think that’s an accurate reflection of what’s actually happened over the last not just week, but several months. But that’s the claim. This is just a scrupulous commitment to good governance and budgeting processes and reducing the debt. And that’s what they’re really passionate about. It has nothing to do with self-aggrandizement or vindictiveness against McCarthy. That’s the claim. What do you think?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: It’s just it’s just a lie. I’m so tired of the lies like this, and it’s so easy to claim purity. It’s so easy in this business. And I wish voters would stop falling for it. That’s the only solution. By the way, voters have to stop believing this nonsense. And so let me let’s take these issues one by one. So if the claim is about regular order. Well, that’s just a straight up lie, because the people who are demanding regular order from Kevin McCarthy were also demanding that he break regular order on it on a regular basis to get their priorities through. So it was it was complete hypocrisy throughout the past year. And it really frustrated a lot of them who were just trying to do the right thing and go through regular. There’s nothing wrong with going to regular order, but these people were often asking for special favors and trying to break regular order. So that’s one thing. Second thing. Appropriation bills passed in regular order. That was a demand. Everybody agreed with that demand. Now, it never gets done on time, but in this case, it actually did get done out of the committee on time. It was never coming to the floor for a vote because these people would say that they wouldn’t vote for them. And so they got in the way of us actually passing appropriations bills so that we could start a negotiation with the Senate on an end of year spending. They simultaneously got in the way of that and then and then and then demanded punishment for leadership, for not bringing them to the floor and finishing them. That’s that’s the actual precedent that they leave out a lot of context when they when they make these when they make these claims about about the speaker’s wrongdoing. And they simultaneously wanted to take power away from him while also imbuing in him or assuming he has all this power like a dictator might have do to to to deliver on on pet projects for these particular people. And there’s there’s just a mass exhaustion in the conference from 95% of everybody else from these people who really are. It is truly self-serving. I did I, I don’t I don’t believe for a second the claims about about purity or nobility, about, you know, changing the way Washington works and whatever other whatever other soundbite they say, It’s just not true.

Guy Benson: I want to ask you one more question on this, because I saw Mark Levin, my colleague at FOX, big time radio host, pretty right wing guy. He and I agree on much, disagree on some things. He is way off to my right often, just temperamentally and a few other things as well. We get along personally, but he put out a pretty intense tweet at length, laying out what you just did and calling out Gates and some of these other guys in no uncertain terms. And it’s just extraordinary to see the replies. And I know Twitter is not real life, and I think that’s the trap some people fall into. But in the online echo chamber world, the grifters are out in force. Not everyone’s a grifter. I think some people are well-meaning, some people are not. Now calling Mark Levin a spineless swamp creature, rhino unit party, globalist or whatever. That’s the new line about Mark Levin. I feel like if Dan Crenshaw and Chip Roy and Mark Levin and Stephen Miller, if these people are all part of the unit party now and it’s all a bunch of rhinos, it’s just a complete like funhouse mirror bizarro world that is not tethered to any sort of reality. And I’m worried that that element has outsized influence, not just on Capitol Hill like we saw yesterday, but among conservative activists and voters and media consumers who either want to believe this stuff or fall into it. I don’t know what the solution is here.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: It’s hard to put it better than you just put it. That’s exactly right. The true unit party is the far left in the far right. That’s the true unit party. You saw it as Democrats were cheering along with these with these, you know, handful of members doing what they did yesterday. That’s the true unit party. And that will continue to be the unit party, right wing populism, which is a burn it all down kind of kind of political preference. That is that cloaks itself in hyper conservatism when it really doesn’t care about conservatism. It’s really about it’s really about disruption for the sake of disruption and personal and personal self servant and they don’t want to win. Here’s the other dirty little secret about all those people attacking Mark with that to attack me and all this that they really want more than anything else is to lose because they’re losing all that that justifies their anger and what they want more than anything else, it feels, is to be victimized and angry and to scream those sound bites about globalists and rhinos over and over and over again and lose and lose and lose and lose. And I don’t want to lose. I want to deliver conservative wins. And I want to be honest with people about what we can deliver based on a solid government and the political reality we live in. And until and so this always gets back to voters. Voters have to stop stop believing a lot. And most voters don’t. To be fair. But a lot of the voters that do pay attention in those comment sections on that post that Mark Levine, that they are believing the lies and perpetuating the lies. And until that until that changes, we’re going to be we’re going to be stuck in this reality where where you’re always going to depose of the speaker, because you know what the speaker didn’t do? He didn’t win the presidency, didn’t win the Senate, and didn’t become a dictator to do everything we want. And so there was always going to be their fault. Right. Which is basically the list of complaints that I think people were relying on yesterday.

Guy Benson: Yeah. And I would just I would just impress upon people if you just have a moment of solitude and reflection and you’re thinking, okay, is the Mark Levin that I’ve watched and listened to for years, has he suddenly gone soft and joined the Union Party as a globalist rhino neocon who isn’t to be trusted anymore? Or is maybe someone who’s called something like cat feces 62 on Twitter? Lying to me like that seems like a good question. People should ask themselves when they get all spun up on this stuff. So I want to now shift Dan Crenshaw to what comes next. The House is not in session. It’s in recess until next week. It cannot do anything. You guys can do nothing until there’s a speaker elected. I’ve seen that Steve Scalise has now thrown his hat in. I saw that Jim Jordan is going to be involved in this process. Tom Emmer is in the mix potentially. Do you have a dog in this fight so far? And do you think that this will be a repeat of January or worse? Or do you think now that we’ve had the shock to the system, it might go weirdly smoothly? What do you anticipate here?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Great question, and I don’t know exactly yet. I don’t even know who’s running just yet. There seems to be some coalitions building. I don’t think it’s going to be a bloody drag out fight between the candidates. I think that will remain civil just based on who I’m seeing jumping into it, whether it escalates and Jim Jordan and a couple others. Those are obviously your two main frontrunners if Emre is not jumping into it. So that will be a perfectly civil and and wonderful debate and it will be a vote. We will go from there. Where there will be controversy is the rule changes that follow. And, you know so this is a member of the speaker’s race was really about earlier in the year when the rule changes and there’s demand that a few members can hold a gun to the speaker’s head via this motion to vacate votes. And we…

Guy Benson: Just lived through and gave in to that.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: We just we gave into it because they assured us that their threshold for doing that would be so high and have such a high standard that we didn’t really have to worry about it.

Guy Benson: Well, okay, so that cannot be trusted.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Obviously they can’t. And that’s going to be the controversy moving forward. There’s going to be plenty of members who will not vote for a rules package if it if it maintains that same gun to the head style rule, but a one vote motion to vacate.

Guy Benson: So just to clarify, do you have a preference in the speaker’s race at this point? Are you waiting?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: I’m waiting and waiting. We’ve barely gotten to hear from them. You know, they’re all good candidates. I’m not worried so much about the quality of the next speaker. Our problems are a deeper guy. And you and I’ve just been talking about it for a lot of time. Has run much deeper. And that’s and that’s and that’s stopping of too many Republicans from from repurposing and repeating the same kind of lies that that that that forced us into a losing situation over and over again about the lies about the political realities we live in.

Guy Benson: I’ve seen some chatter about expelling Matt Gaetz from the conference. Newt Gingrich was arguing for that. I know a lot of your colleagues are livid with him. Would you be open to something like that?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: It would probably give them a little bit too much of what he wants. I. I haven’t seriously considered that. I’ll be. I’ll be honest. I’m not sure it gets us where we want to be in the end. So.

Guy Benson: Fair enough. The next question I had is one of his cohorts in this, Matt Rosendale from Montana. He apparently wants to run for Senate there again. And just for those who aren’t aware, he ran against Jon Tester, who’s the incumbent Democrat, has to be one of the luckiest guys in D.C. with the cycles that he ends up being up in and the opponents that he draws. Jon Tester in a red state has managed to keep getting elected. Last time he got elected against Matt Rosendale, who tried and failed. And we got six more years of a Chuck Schumer rubber stamp in Montana. Rosendale, I guess, wants another bite at the apple. Republicans have someone else in the race, a guy called Tim Sheehy. Smart, young veteran, dynamic, really high quality candidate. But Rosendale wants to come back at this again and I guess is up by 20 or 30 points in the primary. And some of the polling, which again goes back to this question of whether Republican voters want to be serious about winning or not. And I’m just going to point out that Rosendale went in an interview the other day and admitted that he was praying to God last fall that there would not be a red wave because he wanted a very small Republican majority so he could have this type of influence and power in a very thin majority, as opposed to a bigger, more effective Republican majority after the party did well. I just struggle to see how someone like that can have currency enough among the electorate to say, Yes, let’s elevate this person again to seek higher office again in a race that he’s already lost. Like, to me, it’s an encapsulation of the dilemma here.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Again, I don’t know how to put it any better than you just did. It would blow my mind if voters chose Ivan Rosendale with a very strong habit of voting with Democrats. You know, I don’t know him that well, but that’s what I’ve seen during my time here, is he really likes Nancy Pelosi’s most reliable, reliable voting bloc over and over and over again and again. Until voters stop, what they do is they go out and say, well, I had to vote against it because I’m a real conservative. You know, if we just fought or whatever that means, you guys have never been an actual fight in their damn life. I mean, that’s the big joke here. But if they just fought harder, you know, we would have gotten things or how we lay out the strategy. If you really care about your voters, if you care about winning for your voters, then you would come up here and not just be another angry guy at a town hall complaining you’re supposed to be the guy who figures out the strategy within the context of political reality, within the context of a constitutional framework, and actually delivers one win at a time. And then then you go back and you’re honest with your voters about what was possible and what wasn’t. And they never win anything except personal attention. And so I tell people all the time, if you’re if you like a fighter, you need to ask yourself the question, are they fighting for your attention? Are they fighting for you? There’s a difference. There’s a difference. And if you can’t tell the difference, you’re going to keep getting losers who really have no intention of winning for you right there. They just want that personal fame. We’ve seen all the fundraising texts and emails coming out after this. Right. And God help anyone. I hope you’re not giving money to that cause.

Guy Benson: I mean, it’s like the difference between fighting for the sake of fighting in that posture and fighting for the sake of winning. Those are different things. To your point, very quickly, Congressman, two more questions. Yes or no questions. Number one, have you ever prayed for fewer Republican victories against a red wave?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Oh, no. Okay.

Guy Benson: Okay. And then secondly, and finally, have you ever mistaken a fire alarm for a door?

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: Oh, boy. Well, there is this one story now.

Guy Benson: Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, our guest on The Guy Benson Show. Congressman, thanks so much for your time.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: It was great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me. All right.

Guy Benson: We’ll be right back. It’s the guy Benson Show, Happy hour.