The conservative constellation is ever expanding and contracting, a fact on display as the biggest MAGA stars prepare to descend on the Arizona desert at the invitation of Charlie Kirk, one of the youngest and increasingly most influential members of the Trump orbit.
His organization, Turning Point USA, will host its annual political conference this weekend in Phoenix, a little more than a month before Republicans retake the reigns of a unified government. Appropriately enough, Donald Trump will headline the conference. It will be the president-elect’s first rally since winning the election, an honor that reflects the status Kirk holds in Trump World.
Speaker Mike Johnson, currently the highest-ranking Republican, was also scheduled to speak Friday.
And all seemed harmonious among Republicans ahead of the holidays until Trump abruptly blew up a bipartisan plan in Congress to prevent a Christmastime government shutdown, calling what was thought to be a done deal just days ago “a betrayal of our country” and demanding instead a paired down version that also increases the debt-ceiling. Congress now has less than 48 hours to fund the federal government.
All of it underscores the tenuous peace that defines the GOP, and yet notwithstanding the current Christmas chaos, illustrates the ability of Kirk to pull together the disparate populist and establishment parts of the party and larger conservative movement.
Though easily the most conservative speaker Republicans have had in decades, Johnson still represents the face of the establishment. He looks, and often sounds, like a Sunday school teacher, which makes him an outlier in a party, and at a TPUSA conference, that prefers fire-breathing populists. In his absence, the event will return to regularly scheduled MAGA programming.
Most notably, this includes Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who suggested in April that the speaker was “being blackmailed to do the bidding of the left.” The animosity seemed to simmer over the summer after Trump accepted the Republican nomination in Milwaukee, where Carlson and Johnson were both seated next to Trump during the GOP convention.
Steve Bannon, meanwhile, has made no such peace.
The former Trump strategist, who was recently released from prison for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena brought during former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s tenure, previously labeled Johnson “a disgusting, revolting loser.” Amidst the current spending fight, Bannon has called for the ouster of Johnson. “He’s gotta go,” Bannon said Wednesday on his podcast, “The War Room.”
Republican speakers generally have a short shelf-life. Johnson is not the first to feel the ire of his right flank, and for many years before joining leadership, the Louisiana Republican was something of an insurgent himself. He found himself crossways with the GOP establishment in 2018 when then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to repeal and replace Obamacare was deemed insufficiently conservative.
The Arizona conference was a rare opportunity for peace and unity.
“We are entering a time of tremendous change, change the American people are excited about and rejuvenated by,” Kirk said in a statement blasted out by the Trump transition team. “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to take back the reins of power and return our government to We the People.”
The fault lines extend beyond just the political on Capitol Hill. Kirk assembled conservative speakers often at odds with one another on deeper ideological grounds. Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire, who Johnson once called “a national treasure” and who espouses a more traditional conservatism, is also set to speak on the same stage as Carlson.
Previously, Carlson questioned Shapiro’s loyalty to the United States in light of his support for Israel after the Oct. 7 terror attack, a rift over foreign policy that demonstrates the gulf between an old right and a new right over what role exactly the United States should play on the world stage.
For his part, Shapiro represents a sort of MAGA convert. He resigned in protest from Breitbart in 2016, condemning on his way out the door Steve Bannon, whom he called “a bully” and accused of turning that website into “Trump Pravda.” He later endorsed Trump for reelection in 2020 and 2024, explaining at length that his conversion was the result of Trump’s policy.
These differences are not likely to be rehashed, let alone resolved, in the green room this weekend. Kirk has, however, brought together many of the separate, sometimes squabbling, voices within the GOP under one tent at least for one weekend.
And there was hope late Thursday afternoon that House Republicans could agree, at least among themselves, on a deal to keep the government open and extend the debt ceiling until 2027. Democrats, including President Biden, who wields a veto pen, will still have their own say.
But for Kirk, plan B was a sign of new progress.
“In 2016, this CR would have passed regardless of what Donald Trump said, because Congressional Republicans felt free to ignore him and his voters. Not anymore. The GOP became the MAGA party eight years ago, and Congress is finally catching up,” he wrote in a social media post on the website formerly known as Twitter. “This term will be very different from the first.”
