It would be easy to look at the House of Representatives and assume that the members of the Freedom Caucus and not Speaker Kevin McCarthy are the ones who are actually in charge.

This past week was a perfect example of why. On Tuesday, McCarthy raised some eyebrows when he announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

It was a partisan maneuver that has subjected him to a lot of criticism, especially from within his own party.

After all, what new information did McCarthy have to justify this? If you believe the talk around Washington, the answer is none at all.

McCarthy's big impeachment announcement was, according to the conventional wisdom, an attempt to solve a bigger problem, the possibility of a government shutdown at the end of the month.

It was an effort to buy support from the group of far-right members who are tanking the requisite spending bills because they think their fellow conservatives have gone soft.

It's a story we've seen before. For the most part, these holdouts are the same arch conservatives who forced 15 votes on McCarthy's speakership, who demanded and received a one-vote threshold to remove McCarthy as Speaker, and who later coerced the Speaker into breaking the deal he made with Joe Biden to raise the debt limit.

And so yet again, with a government shutdown looming, Speaker McCarthy is dancing to the Freedom Caucus' tune.

Or is he? On today's show, we're putting that question to the leader of one group of Republicans who you don't hear from a lot.

The Moderates.

Ohio Congressman Dave Joyce is the chairman of the Republican Governance Group, the preeminent faction for GOP centrists.

And he's also a senior appropriator, which means he's one of the people who has to figure out how to get out of this government shutdown mess.

On Ryan Liza, and this is Playbook Deep Dive.

If you are in Hollywood, Dave Joyce is the man you'd cast to play the GOP Moderate.

He's an Ohio Republican who represents the suburbs. He's been 25 years as a county prosecutor.

He loves to discuss his record combating algal blooms in the Great Lakes, and on the wall above his desk, in his office, his a giant photo of his golden retriever, and Kevin McCarthy.

Today, in his sixth term, he chairs the powerful Appropriation Subcommittee for Homeland Security, where he controls about $55 billion of funding each year, including money for fraught issues such as immigration and border security.

A caught up with Joyce in his Washington office in Rayburn, to learn how the Republicans you don't see quoted on Breitbart are approaching the tumultuous issues gripping the lower chamber.

We talked at length about the rationale behind McCarthy's new impeachment gambit.

If and how the speaker can claw together the votes to avoid a government shutdown, the odds that McCarthy will face a vote to remove him as speaker.

And what it's really like in private between Joyce and the members of the Freedom Caucus, he battles in public.

Let's start with one of the several hats you wear, which is you lead the Republican governance group.

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