Why Republicans Are on the Verge of Fistfights

Back in the 1800s, there were “fighting men” who roamed the halls of Congress — lawmakers who served as unofficial enforcers of the party line, ready to deploy violence as needed to silence their opponents.

Joanne Freeman, a Yale historian who studies political violence in America and Congress, recalled this rather remarkable notion in an interview with POLITICO Magazine while discussing a pair of other absurd, yet ominous episodes on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

First there was former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy apparently throwing a sharp elbow into Rep. Tim Burchett just weeks after Burchett voted to oust McCarthy from the speakership. Burchett accused McCarthy of landing a “clean shot to the kidney,” though McCarthy denied the allegations, blaming any contact on the “tight hallway.”

Then MMA-fighter-turned-Senator Markwayne Mullin readied himself for a brawl with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in the middle of a Senate hearing. The two havepreviously bickered in the Capitol and online, but this time Mullin urged the labor leader to “stand your butt up” and finish their argument without using their words — even beginning to remove his wedding ring until Sen. Bernie Sanders stepped in to head off the fight.

“It’s certainly not the first time that there has been this kind of aggressive behavior or even physical violence in Congress,” said Freeman, author of “The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.”

When comparing today’s bitter politics and the runup in the 1850s to the Civil War, Freeman sees “more echoes than parallels” and cautions against taking the analogy too far. Back then, Southerners in Congress were so adamant about defending the institution of slavery that they routinely used threats and occasionally even violence in their disputes. Those shows of force are incredibly rare now, she noted, but clearly the two skirmishes in a single day on Capitol Hill signal we’re no longer in an era of “normal politics.”

Notably, Tuesday’s tiffs were not the product of partisan squabbles between Republicans and Democrats, but the result of deep rifts within the GOP.

“They’re not a single party. They’re a divided party,” Freeman said, with no real leadership and no way to bring discipline or accountability to members. That’s what’s fueling these confrontations.

But no, she added, the answer to ending such bickering is not to bring back dueling.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Kelly Garrity: There were some wild moments on Capitol Hill today: first the altercation between Rep. Tim Burchett and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and then the one between Sen. Markwayne Mullin and Teamsters leader Sean O’Brien. What’s your reaction to all this? Are you surprised?

Joanne Freeman: On the one hand, I’m not totally surprised, because we live in a time when these sorts of moments are erupting now and again. As a historian I can say, it’s certainly not the first time there has been this kind of aggressive behavior or even physical violence in Congress. There were scores of incidents like this in the 19th century. But the fact that we’re seeing this sort of thing happen twice in one day is a reminder that we don’t necessarily live in a time of normal politics.

Garrity: Why do you think we’re seeing these confrontations in Congress right now? They didn’t happen even a year ago.

Freeman: What I think we’re seeing today is a product of precisely where the Republican Party is in Congress right now. They’re not a single party. They’re a divided party. Even if a party is fractured, normally it can discipline its members in one way or another. Right now, I don’t think there’s much discipline of any sort going on.

I also think that we live in a time when violence in a general sense — in rhetoric, in the atmosphere — is being talked about and being discussed by presidential candidates.

We have a divided Republican Party that doesn’t have party discipline, doesn’t have a shared mission, doesn’t have a shared message, at a moment when there’s a whole slew of crises surrounding us. This is the kind of moment precisely when that behavior would erupt.

Garrity: You’ve written about the build-up in violence in Congress in the years before the Civil War. Do you see any parallels between what happened back then to today?

Freeman: There are more echoes than parallels. It’s always dangerous to say, what happened in 1850 is just like now.

One thing you certainly saw in the 1830s, ‘40s and ‘50s, is there was one component within Congress — Southerners — who were so adamant about defending the institution of slavery and silencing anyone opposed to it, that they pretty routinely used threats and occasionally violence to silence their opponents.

You had one group of people in Congress who really didn’t care about the standards and rules at play. They were doing what they felt they needed to do to defend their needs and desires for their section of the Union.

One of the interesting things that happened today was when Senator Mullin jumped to his feet, seemingly about to engage in a fight, and Bernie Sanders told him to sit down, you’re a U.S. senator. It made me think of a lot of moments in the 1840s and ‘50s. When something would go horribly wrong on the floor, people would lunge at each other or threats would be exchanged. And someone would stand up and say, “This is the U.S. Congress. What are we doing here? How could this be happening here?”

Garrity: You’ve also written about the practice of dueling, which was common in the 18th and 19th century but now doesn’t exist. Are we seeing some sort of return to that?

Freeman: We’re not seeing a return to dueling.

But one of the arguments Southerners made against ending dueling in Congress was, “Well, if people aren’t afraid of being challenged to a duel, what’s going to stop them from speaking badly of someone or treating someone badly? Nothing. But if they’re afraid of a duel, they’re going to behave.”

Right now we’re at an interesting moment politically in the United States where there isn’t a lot of accountability for anything right now. We’re in a climate where it’s unclear what people can and can’t do or what they can and can’t get away with. Some of the behavior we’re seeing, there’s an assumption that people will get away with it because all kinds of people are getting away with all kinds of things right now politically.

And no, dueling would not be a good way to enforce accountability. Public accountability, or seniors in various parties calling out the behavior would be good.

Garrity: How worried are you that this sort of rhetoric or actual physical violence will seep into the broader public arena and lead to more political violence elsewhere?

Freeman: I think it somehow already has. What we’re seeing in Congress, on the one hand, reveals something about the state of Congress, but it also reveals something about the state of the nation. Congress is representative. So some of what we’re seeing going on there is representative of the spirit and culture of the nation as a whole right now.

Garrity: Much of the friction seems to be coming from within the Republican Party. Burchett helped oust McCarthy from the speakership, so that may be why McCarthy is angry. We also saw a GOP congressman lunge at Rep. Matt Gaetz on the House floor during McCarthy’s first speakership battle in January. Is this a mostly Republican problem?

Freeman: I would say, right now, it is the Republican Party in Congress that is absolutely fractured. One part of that fracture is angry and unwilling to cooperate with anybody else.

Generally speaking, it appears to be that the Republican Party is not interested in bipartisan anything. But one part of the Republican Party is sort of adamantly, angrily, aggressively taking that stance.

They really are standing in Congress in a kind of fist-clenched manner saying, “No compromise, we want what we want and we don’t care how we get it.” That’s not going to promote the kind of debate and dialogue and compromise that makes a legislature work.

Garrity: Does Donald Trump factor into any of this? He’s one of the leaders of the GOP and has long used violent rhetoric.

Freeman: I wouldn’t point the finger at him specifically because it’s bigger than him. He’s not helping. But I think at this point, ideas about violence have become so normalized, partly because of him, partly because of the way in which they’re being discussed in the press or by various political figures or even pundits. We have forgotten how shocking those kinds of ideas should be.

We’re at a point where some fundamental assumptions about democracy in America and what democratic politics means are really up for debate. And they’re up for debate in a dangerous way. And I think that that’s increasing the heat surrounding everything politically that’s happening at this moment.

Garrity: Can you think of other notable examples of violence in Congress?

Freeman: The most famous one is the caning of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts by a representative from South Carolina, Preston Brooks.

There was a fight in the 1800s in the House in front of the speaker’s platform in which a Southerner tried to silence a Northerner, and then the Northerner said he wouldn’t be silenced by a whip-holding slave driver. And the Southerner marched up to the Northerner, and the Northerner punched him.

Within seconds, Southerners were running across the House to defend their fellow Southerner. Seeing that, Northerners came racing across the House to defend their colleague. And what you ended up with was a big brawl in front of the speaker’s platform that looked remarkably like a battle — particularly because members were armed, at the time.

Garrity: It almost sounds like a brawl at a hockey game.

Freeman: I learned of the existence of hockey enforcers when I was working on my book. I talked about members of Congress whose job it was to be violent and silence opponents and one person said, “Oh, yeah, hockey enforcers.”

There would be some men who made it their business to be what at the time would have been called “fighting men.” When the new Congress was elected, people would tend to scope out the new Congress and try and determine who the “fighting men” were, and who the “noncombatants” were. There were some people who were going to make their name on that. Some of them got reelected because they were fighting for the rights of their constituents in a particularly graphic way.