If there is one thing Representative Mike Lawler of New York wants his constituents to know these days, it is that his political party is an absolute mess. “Stuck on stupid,” he branded a band of hard-right Republicans who pulled Congress to the brink of a government shutdown. He said their ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy “undermined the will of the American people.” As for the fight over a replacement that has ground the House to a halt for two weeks and counting? His mounting frustration, voiced in interviews with reporters in the Capitol and on networks like CNN that are typically reviled on the right, is not merely an unusual display of bluntness. It is a risky gambit by one of the House’s most endangered Republicans to insulate himself from his own party as it careens, leaderless, toward another possible shutdown.

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Persons: Mike Lawler, “, Kevin McCarthy “, Mr, Lawler, Jim Jordan Organizations: York, Republicans, CNN