Gallagher supporters say ‘grifters,’ populists behind efforts to force him from office

Two former GOP leaders from U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher’s district — including his predecessor in the House of Representatives — lashed out at a prominent Republican Tuesday, calling her efforts to force him from office “unserious” and a symptom of dysfunction in the party.

Gallagher, a Republican from Green Bay, last week announced he would resign effective April 19, just weeks after he said he would not seek a fifth term representing the state’s 8th Congressional District. The timing of his decision means the district will sit vacant until January, cutting into an already slim GOP majority in the House.

After Gallagher’s announcement, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, took to social media to call for Gallagher’s expulsion from Congress, accusing him of “intentional betrayal” for preventing a special election to replace him. Under Wisconsin law, a special election would be called if Gallagher left office before April 2.

A day earlier, Greene filed a motion to remove U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, as House speaker. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Greene slammed both Gallagher and Johnson.

“Mike Gallagher betrayed all of us, and Speaker Johnson, as the one who’s responsible for our majority, he praised Mike Gallagher on Friday after he announced his departure,” she told the cable network. “Speaker Johnson should be forcing Mike Gallagher to leave early so that his district can hold a special election, and any strong Republican speaker of the House would expel a member for leaving our razor-thin majority in such a delicate, delicate state.”

In an interview with WPR Tuesday, Reid Ribble, a Republican who represented the 8th Congressional District until 2017, said Gallagher had served his constituents well, brushing back the comments from Greene.

“I certainly wouldn’t put her at the top of the pecking order for overall intelligence and thoughtfulness as members of Congress go,” Ribble said. “And so I have a tendency just to pretty much disregard anything she says.”

In a separate interview, former Wisconsin Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, said Republicans like Greene bear much of the blame for the party’s shrinking majority, calling Greene “completely unserious.”

“It’s unfortunate that Congress has become a spot for grifters to land, and I think it’s going to do a lot of damage for our country in the long run,” he said. “We need a lot more Mike Gallagher-type people than we need Marjorie Taylor Greene-type people.”

Reid Ribble: MAGA Republicans are populists, not conservatives

Both Ribble and Steineke are no strangers to criticizing former President Donald Trump or the Make America Great Again movement he started.

In 2016, Ribble warned that Trump had done lasting damage to the Republican Party. That same year, Steineke called Trump a “morally bankrupt con man,” prompting conservatives to challenge him as majority leader.

Ribble, who describes himself as a Ronald Reagan Republican, said he considers Greene, Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans to be populists — not true conservatives. 

He said there’s parallels in history to the MAGA movement, pointing to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia that gave birth to the Soviet Union or the populist movements in Italy and Germany that led to World War II.

“Populism by its nature is authoritarian,” Ribble said. “They’re not really interested in finding common ground with anybody. They’re interested in dictating how things must be, because they are 100 percent convinced that they are right.”

“I’m not saying that the Trumpism and the MAGAism wing of the Populist Party are Nazis. That’s not at all what I’m saying,” he added. “What I’m saying is populist movements start by creating victimization in the population. That becomes dangerous because people who feel they’ve been victimized get angry. And people who are angry want to do things like they did on Jan. 6.”

Recent Gallagher votes put him at odds with the GOP

Gallagher’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in his statement announcing the resignation, Gallagher said the decision came after consulting with his family. 

He’s told media outlets he hopes to spend more time with his two young children after leaving Congress. Forbes reports Gallagher plans to take a job with American surveillance company and defense contractor Palantir.

Gallagher is a Marine Corps veteran who graduated from Princeton University and holds a doctorate in international relations from Georgetown University. In office, he often focused on foreign relations issues and national security.

That focus included his push for a ban on the TikTok app over concerns about Chinese government access to American’s cell phone data. The House passed that legislation shortly before Gallagher’s resignation announcement.

The congressman had signaled a growing split with GOP leadership in the weeks leading up to his resignation when he voted against the impeachment of the homeland security chief in February, derailing that effort. And he would not commit to attending the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

David Helpap, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, said it’s highly unlikely Greene would be successful in her call for Gallagher to be expelled from Congress. He said calls for his expulsion further highlight divides within the House GOP. 

“I don’t think anyone would argue that it hasn’t been a challenge for the Republican Party to effectively govern in the House of Representatives lately, where you have two camps that are trying to move that chamber forward and in the direction that they best see fit,” he said. “When you have such a slim majority, that just doesn’t work.”