Edited by: TJVNews.com

The Republicans opposing Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become the next House speaker generally have made their mark as part of the GOP’s ultra-conservative wing, eager to pick a fight with leaders from both parties and rarely finding major bipartisan bills to be a good thing, as was reported by the AP.

Most are members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that also had strained relationships with former House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

“They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is,” Boehner once told Vanity Fair, as was reported by the AP/

Still, most members of the Freedom Caucus do support McCarthy’s bid. The AP reported that those who do not say they are fighting for their constituents and aiming to change a legislative process that gives most members of Congress no meaningful role beyond voting yes or no on a final product.

The AP also reported that the McCarthy holdouts say they want more opportunities to amend bills and have extended debate, and they want to restore the ability of any lawmaker to force a vote on whether to remove the future speaker, which they argue creates accountability.

On Wednesday, former president Donald Trump voiced fresh support for McCarthy’s bid for House speaker, counseling fellow Republicans to “NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT.”

The Washington Post reported that Trump wrote in capital letter on Truth Social, his social media platform that for House Republicans,  “IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE, YOU DESERVE IT.”

“Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB — JUST WATCH!” Trump wrote.

Here is a look at some of those leading the fight against McCarthy’s ascension to the speakership:

Rep. Bob Good of Virginia won office in 2020 after GOP voters ousted the Republican incumbent, Denver Riggleman, who had angered social conservatives by officiating a gay marriage. Good, a former athletics official at evangelical Liberty University, was one of the first to say he would be opposing McCarthy,  the AP reported.

“Everyone supporting Kevin McCarthy, or at least voicing their support for Kevin McCarthy is doing so in their own selfish political interests,” Good said after Tuesday’s raucous, closed-door GOP conference meeting, according to the AP report.  “Everyone who is opposing Kevin McCarthy is doing so in conflict with their own selfish political interest. And they are doing so because they believe it’s right and they believe it’s important for the country,” Good added.

Pundits have opined that those Republicans who are standing in opposition to McCarthy assuming the position of House Speakers are concerned with continuing the Trump legacy in the new congress by selecting someone who held a prominent post in his administration.

Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana is entering his second term in the House and says his constituents are lobbying him to change the leadership in Congress.  He has backed Trump’s statements about fraud in the 2020 presidential election and he recently voted against U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, citing what he said are more pressing security needs along the southern border, as was reported by the AP.

“I’ve said all along I’m not going to be supporting anyone for speaker that has played a part in the leadership team that has managed the demise of our country over the last 10 years,” Rosendale said.

Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona not only challenged McCarthy in an initial, internal GOP vote for House speaker, but he was also a nominee himself in the first round of voting Tuesday, the AP reported. He gained only 10 votes.

A former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Biggs filed articles of impeachment in the last Congress against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the AP reported. McCarthy took up the cause in his push to become House speaker, saying that if Mayorkas didn’t resign, GOP-led investigations could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Biggs was also one of four lawmakers referred to the House Ethics Committee after they defied subpoenas from the House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the US Capitol.

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania was one of the other Republicans who got a subpoena from the Jan. 6 investigative panel and was referred to the Ethics Committee when he declined to answer the committee’s questions, the AP reported. The panel was investigating meetings some lawmakers, including Perry had with the White House as Trump and his associates attempted to provide proof that the election was stolen from him.

Perry was cited more than 50 times in a Senate Judiciary Committee report outlining how Trump’s effort to overturn his election defeat to Joe Biden brought the Justice Department to the brink of chaos and prompted top officials there and at the White House to threaten to resign, the AP reported. The report said Perry contacted a department official to say officials weren’t doing their job with respect to elections. Perry is the current chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, according to the AP report.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado is a conservative firebrand whose combative style has helped define the new right. The AP reported that the one-time owner of a gun-themed restaurant relishes fights on social media. She noted that “her favorite president,” a reference to Trump, has called on the anti-McCarthy holdouts to “knock this off,” but suggested an alternative.

“I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy, ‘Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw,’” she said Wednesday on the House floor, prompting loud “oooh” from many colleagues, the AP reported.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida is a close ally of Trump who broke with him early when it comes to McCarthy. The House Ethics Committee announced an investigation into Gaetz in April as federal prosecutors probed sex trafficking allegations against him, the AP reported. Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

“If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise,” Gaetz said of McCarthy, as was reported by the AP.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas once served as Sen. Ted Cruz’s chief of staff before winning election to the House. The AP reported that he has been nominating alternative candidates for speaker such as Jim Jordan of Ohio and Byron Donalds of Florida.

Most of Roy’s concerns are about the legislative process, noting that the House floor is nearly empty for most debates and members haven’t been able to offer amendments there for years, the AP reported. While Roy said progress had been made with McCarthy in negotiations over House rules, he also said “we do not have the tools or leadership yet to stop the swamp from rolling over the American people. This is not personal. It’s not.”

The other Republican House members who are opposing McCarthy for House Speaker include, Dan Bishop of North Caroline, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Michael Cloud of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Eli Crane of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona,  Andy Harris of Maryland, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Mary Miller of Illinois, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Keith Self of Texas.

According to a report on Wednesday of the fivethirtyeight.com web site, “there were also several extremely conservative, anti-establishment Republicans who broke with their compatriots and voted for McCarthy, such as Reps.-elect Ken Buck, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan.” Fivethirtyeight.com also reported that “Greene has been a defender of McCarthy as she has attempted to build influence within the GOP. Meanwhile, Jordan, the Freedom Caucus’s founding chairman, called for the party to come together while nominating McCarthy for speaker on the second ballot. His support was especially ironic since McCarthy’s 20 opponents voted for him on the third ballot.”

It also appears that Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York is receiving resounding support amongst his party’s leadership. Currently, he has 212 votes as opposed to McCarthy’s 201 votes as was reported on Wednesday by Fox News.

First elected to Congress in 2012, Jeffries has a history of displaying the very behavior that many in the Democratic Party now accuse their opposition of, Fox News reported.

In multiple tweets, ranging from June 2017 to January 2018, Jeffries seemingly refused to acknowledge Donald Trump as the rightful winner of the 2016 presidential election, according to the Fox News report. “Climate Change is NOT a hoax. But 45’s election may have been,” Jeffries wrote in a June 2017 tweet, nearly five months after Trump entered the White House.

Jeffries — who was elected in November by his Democratic House colleagues to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as leader — has faced scrutiny from high-ranking Republicans over previously resurfaced remarks he made apparently denying the legitimacy of Trump’s presidential election victory, Fox News reported. But numerous times in tweets during Trump’s presidency, Jeffries repeatedly suggested that Trump’s election was fraudulent.

Fox News also reported that other tweets denying Trump’s election victory from Jeffries have also been made public, primarily from the Republican National Committee, which criticized Jeffries as an “election denier” and posted tweets that Jeffries had posted in 2018. (Additional reporting by: Fern Sidman)