THERE'S PLENTY OF HATE TO GO AROUND

By Robert P. Bomboy

The so-called Freedom Caucus is akin to the Tea Party, though there's no fun and games with it. As it has operated inside the House of Representatives in Congress, it's an obstructionist cabal dedicated to thwarting government by continuously throwing wrenches into the wheels.

Its members led the federal government shutdown in 2013, nearly created two more government shutdowns, required the U.S. Treasury to take extraordinary measures to avoid defaulting on the national debt, and forced the previous House Speaker, John Boehner, to resign.

The Freedom Caucus took its name in 2015, but it had been informally active since 2011. It consists of 35 Republican members of the U.S. House, nearly a quarter of whom have held Tea Party membership. Others among them are very far-right Libertarians.

These conservative agitators who would rather fight than switch and have seemed to enjoy throwing their wrenches into the gears are nowhere near popular even with other, less-doctrinaire Republicans. For the Freedom Caucus, "freedom" is the right to say NO. As one senior party aide said during last month's Trumpcare fight, "They don't know how to get to yes. They just don't."

Yet I hate to say it, but, at least for the moment, Americans should be grateful to these stubborn obstructionists. They shot down Trumpcare, refusing to budge - not because there was mercy in their hearts, but because they held out to make the President's doomed Affordable Care Act even more cruel than it was, wanting to remove coverage for people who have pre-existing medical conditions and take away or vastly underfund maternity care, drug-addiction treatment, and other essential services that Obamacare now covers for millions of Americans.

The Freedom Caucus has been hijacking the Republican Party’s plans in Congress like this for years, yet it has easily weathered the Party's attempts to bring it into line. The leadership has denied Caucus members positions on important House of Representatives committees and banned them from official congressional trips. Caucus leader Mark Meadows was even stripped of his subcommittee chairmanship.

But, as Bradley Harris of Duke University points out, "These efforts at discipline have backfired, angering the Freedom Caucus and hardening members’ resolve: When Meadows was stripped of his chairmanship, the committee refused to install anyone else as a replacement, forcing the leadership to re-install Meadows as its chair."

These futile attempts at punishment have so far taught the Freedom Caucus that they can succeed in bucking the House leadership’s wishes. And we haven’t heard the last of them by a long shot. They will dig in their heels again as the House debates a new budget, making another government shutdown a possibility on April 28.

But President Trump hasn't forgotten what happened to his Trumpcare bill, and he's a vengeful man. He's made the Freedom Caucus No. 1 on his enemies list. As his henchman Steve Bannon, who has been singling out Freedom Caucus members, has said, "There's plenty of hate to go around."

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