Inside the House Freedom Caucus’ identity crisis

Source: Politico | April 29, 2022 | Olivia Beavers

The conservatives who built their political brand on challenging GOP leaders are starting to struggle with problems of their own.

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert look from the outside like MAGA twins, both loathed by Democrats for their incendiary right-wing rhetoric. But inside the House GOP, they’re not quite buddy-buddy.

Privately, Republicans say Boebert (R-Colo.) — who’s seen as more of a party team player than Greene — detests being tied to her Georgia colleague. And when the House Freedom Caucus board of directors gathered last month at its usual spot a few blocks from the Capitol, the two tangled over Greene’s appearance at a February event organized by a known white nationalist.

Their confrontation grew so heated that at least one onlooker feared the Greene-Boebert back-and-forth might escalate beyond the verbal cage match had another board member not stepped in to de-escalate, according to a GOP lawmaker who was granted anonymity to describe what happened. The incident was confirmed by three people connected to the Freedom Caucus, whose members largely avoided public criticism of Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) at the time and focused their discontent on the event organizer, Nick Fuentes.

The run-in between Greene and Boebert is a microcosm of a bigger identity crisis that’s starting to take hold within the Freedom Caucus. A group founded with right-leaning policy ambition that later became a Donald Trump defense team is starting to split in important ways, from how to respond to this week’s Kevin McCarthy tapes to — more fundamentally — whether to reorient itself back to its limited-government roots.

“We need to reevaluate where we’re heading,” Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), a current but less active group member, said in an interview. “I like the principles that the Freedom Caucus was founded on, but I think that if we can’t work together as a group and push our ideas in a civil manner, then we’re not going to be very effective.”

Interviews with more than 40 Republicans — including 30 lawmakers, 16 of them in the Freedom Caucus — paint a picture of a group that shapeshifted as the GOP itself realigned during Trump’s presidency, becoming more populist and nationalist, but less bound by policy principles.

Some of the people closest to the group’s complicated origin story warn that if it doesn’t return to its roots, moving away from firebrands who are more likely to cause a stir than sponsor a bill, its influence risks waning just as the GOP reclaims the majority.

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While the Freedom Caucus doesn’t publicly release its roster, it has roughly 35 active current members. That includes several lawmakers whom multiple current and former members say would have been shut out as potential chaos agents if they’d tried to join initially; often pointed to are members like Greene, Boebert and Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.).

In part because of those Trump acolytes’ influence, some Republicans say privately that they’re watching to see if the Freedom Caucus ends up becoming what it was designed to correct: a bloated GOP group that lacks cohesion.

Changes within the group over the past couple of years have fomented so much frustration among certain members that at least two have separately entertained the idea of leaving to start offshoot groups, according to two Republicans with firsthand knowledge of those discussions.

Early members like Mulvaney say the group was intended as a nimble strike force, dedicated to pushing legislation to the right but also thoughtful about the fights it picked. However, previous iterations of the Freedom Caucus were undeniably obstructionist when it counted — pushing to shut down the government over repealing Obamacare and building Trump’s border wall.

The Freedom Caucus declined to offer a comment for this story. But multiple members dismissed the idea that it is at odds with itself.

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