'Lying and misleading the American people': Garret Graves says GOP must tune out extremist

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WASHINGTON — Appearing before a group of GOP think-tankers recently, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves let loose with a biting analysis on how social media lies and false narratives have kept the Republican House majority from addressing key issues like the budget and the border.

Fighting amongst themselves in a way they managed to avoid when Democrats controlled the lower chamber, House Republicans have set unrealistic goals and persuaded American voters that anything less than a complete victory is a defeat, the Baton Rouge Republican said in a speech to the Ripon Society.

“What we found ourselves in the Republican conference doing, is going down this path where we mislead the American public and made them believe that we can achieve this,” Graves said pointing to the ceiling. “And anything short of balancing the budget tomorrow, of absolutely closing the border and having the wall built next week, anything short of going back to the energy policies of the Bush administration, is a failure.”

Republicans should instead embrace incremental wins — rather than swing for the fences with each pitch — because they control only one half of one of the three independent branches of government, he said.

Graves' comments were reminiscent of a decade-old call by his former boss, Gov. Bobby Jindal, for Republicans to “stop being the stupid party.” Jindal made his analysis — to reach out to more voters with a more inclusive message — after President Barack Obama, overcame sluggish approval ratings to win reelection in November 2012.

The Ripon Society, Graves' audience, calls itself a center-right Republican public policy think tank.

Graves was the keynote speaker at a Feb. 5 dinner. He assured the group that his was not a farewell address, where politicians finally speak the truth — though Graves' reelection appears in peril after the Legislature back home recently redrew Louisiana's congressional map.

Rather, he was passing along his observations of what has been happening since the 118th Congress convened in January 2023, then took 15 ballots to overcome far-right GOP resistance to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, as speaker of the House. After nine stormy months, a cabal of eight right-wing Republicans orchestrated the removal of McCarthy from the leadership post on Oct. 3. That began a three-week donnybrook that ended with the ascension of Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Benton, as speaker.

But during that time, Graves recalled that House Republicans had a major, if often overlooked, accomplishment: Negotiating on equal footing with the Democratic White House and Democrat-led Senate to secure reductions in spending in return for raising the ceiling on how much money the nation could borrow to pay its bills.

“We didn’t go in and ask for the sun, moon and stars. We calibrated our ask with our leverage that resulted in what I think [is] a pretty good conservative win — cutting spending by $2.1 trillion, the largest spending reduction in American history,” Graves said. Though the House approved the deal, which Graves, a close McCarthy ally, was a part of striking, some House members blasted it through conservative broadcast media, in podcasts and in posts on X and Facebook.

Social media has enabled people whose extreme opinions would have been ignored in an earlier age, Graves said. Those people now can attract millions of followers and give false narratives credibility. “Said another way, completely just lying and misleading the American people and then acting on it,” he said.

“You think I’m wrong?” Graves said. “Look, AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who in 2019 defeated a 10-term incumbent) is really nice, but she was a bartender and came to Congress. Now she is one of the most well-known politicians up here. Said another way, she is unencumbered by experience.

“We have them too, we do, we have them on our side as well,” Graves said. “We’re really in this dangerous situation now where social media is powerful and amazing as it is, I don’t think that we’ve really caught up with it in regard to how to properly use it.”

Graves, 52, began his political career in the 1990s as an aide to now-retired Rep. Billy Tauzin, a conservative Democrat from Chackbay who changed parties in 1995. He worked on congressional committees, including one chaired by Sen. David Vitter, R-Metairie. He joined Jindal in 2008 as head of the agency fighting coastal erosion and was elected to Congress in 2014, defeating Edwin W. Edwards in that legendary politician's last campaign.

Graves' political clout skyrocketed as he became an adviser to McCarthy on climate, energy and transportation issues. McCarthy then named him unofficial head of an elite party leadership committee and had Graves participate in other leadership efforts. He was courted last year as a potential alternative to Jeff Landry for governor. Ultimately, Graves decided to stay in Congress and endorsed business lobbyist Stephen Waguespack, his friend and colleague from the Jindal years, in last year's gubernatorial contest.

In October, when McCarthy was stripped of his speakership, Graves was removed from the powerful positions McCarthy had put him in. And he found himself at odds with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, whose district abuts that of Graves.

Scalise wanted to move up to the speaker's position. And though Graves has said he supported Scalise, he also repeatedly argued that the House GOP needed to change its protocols before simply allowing its leaders to move up a rung on the leadership ladder. Many in the Scalise camp believe Graves sabotaged the majority leader's effort to become speaker, though Graves adamantly denies it.

In what appeared to be payback from Graves' powerful rivals, the newly elected Legislature in January — at Landry's urging — approved moving the lines of Graves' 6th Congressional District to create a second minority-majority representative. The reconfiguration stretched the lines of the 6th District west and north toward Shreveport to include a majority of Black voters.

In choosing that map, lawmakers overlooked previously proposed maps drawn to create a second congressional district in which African Americans, who comprise a third of the state's population, would have a majority. Those earlier maps would have had the greatest impact on the districts represented by Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Start.

The system of government designed by the founding fathers was wise in that the three branches of government created a balance of power, Graves said. Each branch had responsibility for one facet of governing.

“There’s one flaw in what they did — no one really thought about what happens when one of them becomes entirely dysfunctional. And that would be us, the Congress,” Graves said, adding that the other branches of government have moved in to fill the void.

“The whole representation of what’s in the best interest of the American public is being doused right now by this dysfunction in government, by this civil war that is happening within our own party, and to some degree within the Congress, where politics reigns instead of what’s best for the country.”

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