This won’t make House Speaker John Boehner’s life any easier.
Nine of the most conservative House Republicans are forming a caucus to push policy further to the right, the group announced Monday. The birth of the House Freedom Caucus reflects frustration among some that the Republican Study Committee, once the concentrated nerve center of the House GOP’s right wing, has ballooned in size and taken a less confrontational approach with GOP leaders than some of its members would like.
…The new Freedom Caucus is likely to take a more in-your-face stance with GOP leaders. Its aim is to promote “an agenda of limited, constitutional government in Congress,” the group said in a joint statement Monday.
This, too – what a concept!
“Our main hope is that we can represent the voids and valleys for our constituents back home,” Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho told The Daily Signal today. “With a small group that is nimble and able to work on issues that are of importance to our constituents, we can make a difference in Congress.”
…“The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them” its mission statement says. “We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans.”
The Past: one Continuing Resolution (50 names) , second CR (57 names). The Present and Future? A new Caucus in the US House? Nine names for this Freedom Caucus:
The group has nine founding members, including Jordan and Representatives Raúl Labrador (R., Idaho), Justin Amash (R., Mich.), Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), John Fleming (R., La.), Scott Garrett (R., N.J.), Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), Mick Mulvaney (R., S.C.), and Matt Salmon (R., Ariz.).
From my stand here in NH, I see an empty spot where a name should be. You know, a redo? But are we seeing a redeux instead?
Freedom Caucus: what is this all about? It certainly is clear that the former mainstay Conservative group in the House, the Republican Study Committee, has been co-opted by the Establishment – that has been evident for a number of years now and there’s been a bunch of grousing about that departure from its original intent. After all:
“The main thing is to be small and nimble so when things happen on the [House] floor with policy or procedure, that we can be ready to act in a positive way,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R., Idaho), one of the Freedom Caucus’s founding members, said in an interview Monday.
Like the RSC, the new Freedom Caucus will also be an invitation-only group, but it will start as a fraction of the older group’s size. Last year the RSC swelled to 173 members, almost three-fourths of the House GOP
Well one thing is for sure and we certainly saw plenty of it here in this last election cycle – a number of Republican candidates ran as “Conservatives” that many of us that follow stuff closely KNOW to be false advertisement – sorta like when left-wing Progressive Democrats call themselves “centrists” and “pragmatists”. There is just NO WAY that 3/4’s of the US House Republicans would be considered “conservative” – instead, the RSC was just perceived as “where all the cool kids go” or as a way to have “instant gravitas” and “con-cred” (regardless if any of those three things actually fit the pol that walked into that room). And all you’ll have to do to see that I’m right is watch the legislation crafted and passed.
Well, it still isn’t late for that absentee name from NH:
The founding members will decide who receives an invitation to join the group; to finance the hiring of staff, they’ll also pay “mortgages,” a higher level of funding for the organization than the rest of the dues-paying members will be required to provide. They hope to cap the group at around 40 lawmakers, and expect to debut with more than 30 — a crucial number, because it takes 29 dissents to block the House Republican majority from passing a bill.
(H/T: a mashup from Washington Wire, Daily Signal, National Review,
