U.S. Congress (Photo: House.gov web page of Rep. John Katko, R-N.Y.)
A staunch conservative member of Congress says the House Freedom Caucus may have its heart in the right place, but its tactics are counterproductive and actually aid the political opposition.
The House Freedom Caucus was created earlier this year in the wake of the challenge from the right to House Speaker John Boehner. It is credited with forcing Boehner from power and halting the rise of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to replace him. On Wednesday, a supermajority of the caucus backed House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to be speaker but fell short of an official endorsement.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., was a member of the House Freedom Caucus but resigned in mid-September, concluding that the group’s strategy did more harm than good.
“I feel that the HFC’s many missteps have made it counterproductive to its stated goals and I no longer wish to be associated with it,” McClintock told the Hill at the time.
McClintock, who enjoys an “A” rating from the Conservative Review Scorecard, the same tally that gives Ryan an “F,” hasn’t changed his opinion at all in the past few weeks.
“What the Freedom Caucus has done, in the name of conservatism, is to move the political center of gravity of the House dramatically to the left,” McClintock said.
He said it’s not the political positions of caucus members he disagrees with. In fact, he is very sympathetic on many policy issues. However, McClintock said the approach the caucus often takes results in the opposite of its intentions.
“The danger of the House Freedom Caucus is that their position is that decisions on running the House, that are traditionally made by the majority party in its conference, ought to be moved instead to the House floor,” he said. “I’ve tried repeatedly to warn them that on the House floor there is a disciplined block of 188 Democrats who get to vote, led by Nancy Pelosi. Not one of them gets to vote in the House Republican Conference.”
He then explained why caucus members taking their fight to the floor is a bad idea.
“(If) you want to move these decisions of selecting a speaker or scheduling floor votes from the conference to the House floor, beware,” McClintock said. “Those 188 Democrats are far more likely to combine with the 30 most liberal Republicans in the House, not the 30 most conservative.”
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.:
McClintock said this is not just political theory. He asserted that Freedom Caucus tactics have inadvertently reinvigorated an issue conservatives hate.
“We’ve already seen that with the scheduling of the revival of the Export-Import Bank,” he said. “That’s a battle that we had won. The Export-Import Bank, which is a poster child for crony capitalism, expired on June 30. Because it is opposed by a majority of the Republican Conference, it was never scheduled for a vote to be renewed.
“But when the Freedom Caucus broke that tradition, it freed the liberals in the conference to join with Democrats and execute the first discharge petition in 12 years. Now we’re going to have a vote on that, and those 188 Democrats will combine with the most liberal members of the Republican conference and vote that bill out.”
A discharge petition forces the majority leader to bring a bill to the floor if supporters can prove more than half the members are in favor of it.
McClintock said if caucus members don’t change course on their tactics, the Export-Import Bank will just be the tip of the iceberg.
“The real danger for conservatives is this same math works for amnesty for illegal aliens, blowing the lid off of spending caps, bringing back the tawdry era of congressional earmarks,” he said. ” That’s the Pandora’s Box the House Freedom Caucus has opened.”
He said that threat could also materialize in the vote for speaker if the party is fractured.
“By threatening to withhold votes on the House floor for the Republican conference’s choice for speaker, there’s already discussion now, if Paul Ryan isn’t able to make that 218-vote threshold, there will be a coalition formed between those 188 Democrats and the 30 most liberal members of our conference,” McClintock warned.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/freedom-caucus-opening-pandoras-box-in-house/
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