WASHINGTON, DC – Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) said Monday night at the Claremont Institute’s Up from Conservatism on Capitol Hill event that what many call “chaos” among the Republican conference in the House of Representatives is actually a sign the “new GOP” is winning against the establishment wing of the party.
Banks spoke at the end of the event in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, which highlighted the book Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right After a Generation of Decay. The book is a series of essays from “some of the Right’s most interesting thinkers and practitioners” and “seeks to reframe the ideological and policy direction of the American Right,” its back cover states.
The congressman, who is the leading candidate for Indiana’s U.S. Senate election in 2024 and has former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, said that Republicans have done little with their ultra-thin majority in the House but emphasized the internal fights in the party signal the populist faction is winning its battle versus the old guard of the GOP.
“We’ve had the majority for a year; we don’t have a whole lot to show for it. So let’s be honest about it. What have we accomplished over the last year – I suppose one thing we accomplished is we turned a five-seat majority into a two-seat majority. No one’s ever done that before. We’ve really fallen flat on our face in holding Mayorkas and Biden accountable,” said Banks, sarcastically adding, “but we sure got that Santos guy.”
President Joe Biden, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas arrive for a briefing about the impact of Hurricane Ian during a visit to FEMA headquarters, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
“But on the flip side, I think this is really important: what a lot of people think of and look at when they look at the House and the Republican majority, what a lot of people call ‘Chaos,’ I think is progress,” Banks went on to add. “…I think that chaos and those internal fights are a sign of the new GOP winning. I mean, I really do. I think that the fights that we’ve had in the House, this Congress, with the new Republicans like [Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY)] and other new Republicans in the House, show some progress.”
He also pointed to the event’s first speaker, Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) presence in the Senate as another sign of progress and hailed him as “the very best at what we’ve got going for us in the new GOP in the United States Senate.”
Earlier in his remarks, Banks contended that the right is in an all-out “war” with the left, and conservatives must “stop backing down to the left in the way that the old GOP would do every single time that they had even a little bit of power to fight back.”
“The other side isn’t interested in honest negotiating, so really, who cares about arguing over tax credits, when they want illegal immigrants to be able to vote?” Banks wondered.
Banks also praised the event’s panelists during his remarks, including Hageman, Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), and Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), among others, and read an excerpt from Up from Conservatism.
