The GOP Establishment has never liked the House Freedom Caucus. In fact, they have spent years slandering every iteration of the group as a cadre of nutcases cobbled together to cause chaos — and that’s to put it lightly.
Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) called the group of 20 Republicans holding out on supporting Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) a bunch of “terrorists” on Wednesday night. He has since said it was just a figure of speech, but he had a near conniption on CNN, blasting the same group as “enemies.”
Tucker on Dan Crenshaw's "terrorists" comment: "Over the past few years pretty much every part of the war on terror has been turned against the domestic political enemies of the neocons. What you just saw is the snarling face of the donor class." pic.twitter.com/Ygd5ptmjcD
— American Firebrand (@AmFirebrand) January 5, 2023
Nonetheless, it wasn’t exactly a unique insult from a moderate Republican toward his conservative colleagues.
In fact, Crenshaw sounded pretty similar to former Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). Crenshaw also bemoaned this week that the Freedom Caucus took the “scalp” of Boehner more than half a decade ago.
Boehner, the ex-Ohio congressman who recently wept over Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, hated the Freedom Caucus.
He’s actually had kinder words to say about Democrats than he ever did for those in his own party who bucked his wing of the GOP.
As previously reported, in 2017, Boehner whined that the Freedom Caucus coalition “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.”
He also called them “far-right kooks” in his memoir. Yet his complaints don’t exactly have merit.
What the group really wanted was somebody who could deliver — contrary to his criticisms — on very specific policy goals that they stood for as lined out in an agenda they called “Contract With America II.”
Those objectives included, among other things:
- Overhauling Social Security, Medicare and other politically sensitive entitlement programs
- Repealing the estate tax
- Trying once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act
- Further boosting defense spending so that the Pentagon has sufficient funding to wage two major wars in different parts of the world without having to make offsetting cuts elsewhere
- Cutting U.S. dependency on foreign oil by 20 percent by 2025
- Closing corporate tax loopholes
- Cutting the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent
- Slashing federal regulations and red tape by 20 percent
- Balancing the budget
- Denying federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other organizations involved with performing abortions
Leading the group at the time was Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH). More establishment members complained that they simply couldn’t make any of the demands happen — despite Republicans campaigning on doing those things for decades.
So, Jordan was later blasted by Boehner as “a terrorist as a legislator going back to his days in the Ohio House and Senate … A terrorist. A legislative terrorist.”
Perhaps that’s where Crenshaw borrowed the term from in 2023.
So, since the group didn’t feel confident in leadership in 2015, the Freedom Caucus effectively pushed Boehner out of the speakership position.
When the Freedom Caucus wouldn’t go for McCarthy at that time — due to similar concerns being argued right now — the job went to then-Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who received majority support from the representatives.
Ryan had moderate success working with the so-called “rebels” during the Trump years, but not all changes the group wanted were implemented during that time to truly change how Washington works.
So, it seems they’re now standing against McCarthy until a satisfactory amount of rule changes and other requests are ensured so that they can better prevent the federal government from contributing to the decline of the nation.
Of course, it should be noted that the Freedom Caucus was largely born out of Tea Party members dissatisfied with the status quo and unwilling to be co-opted by the establishment.
Many of the early members of the Freedom Caucus were from the Tea Party.
The grassroots movement members, for their part, were also blasted as “radicals” by folks such as former Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA). Cantor was also touted by the GOP Establishment as a future leader of the party. He was even expected to be the next Speaker after Boehner until he lost his primary in 2014 against a Tea Party candidate.
Why did Cantor also hate the Tea Party? Well, the Tea Party simply wanted a GOP that didn’t pass Democrat-lite bills. In other words, the movement wanted the Republican Party to be truly conservative.
Now, a group of like-minded individuals carries on that fight in the House — this time demanding that rules are changed to ensure conservative bills make it to the floor, bad ones are blocked, and that there are guardrails to ensure that the out-of-touch GOP elite can’t squash true conservative opposition.
After McCarthy has failed to gain the magic number of 218 votes in Congress to win the speakership after a whopping nine rounds of votes, it looks like the Freedom Caucus may be successful this go-around at getting what they want.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Related: It’s Nonsense To Say The Anti-McCarthy Speakership Crowd Has No Specific Requests