from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.

This is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the Wall Street Journal opinion page.

I'm Jerry Baker, editor-at-large of the journal.

Thank you very much for joining us.

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choose to do, you're listening.

This week, Civil War and the Republican Party, what's next for the House GOP?

On Tuesday, eight Republicans in the House of Representatives joined forces with 208 Democrats

to depose Speaker Kevin McCarthy after just nine months in office.

Their complaint, they say, is that,

among other things, McCarthy wasn't serious about reigning in federal spending at a time of booming

deficits. This after the Speaker himself had relied on Democrats at the weekend,

to pass a stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. The rebels had earlier blocked

the measure that would have actually cut spending by even more. Or whatever the justification, the result looks like

complete disarray in the Republican Party. Again, the EP conference will now try to elect a new

speaker when it returned next week. Two candidates have so far put themselves forward,

Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan.

There's also intriguing talk that none other than Donald Trump might show up next week,

perhaps even hustle for the job himself.

So what does all this tell us about the state of the House Republicans and indeed the party in general?

At a time when polls say voters have more faith in the GOP on major policy issues, especially

...