Republican leaders and rank-and-file members have been grappling with how to handle the House Freedom Caucus since most of them came to Washington in 2010’s Tea Party wave. Now that they have defied President Trump, they’re hoping he can finally make them fall into line.
“When he tweets things like he did … it gives me cover to echo that,” Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., told the Washington Examiner about Trump’s jabs at the House Freedom Caucus via Twitter.
The Republican House Freedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. After so many bad years they were ready for a win!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2017
“The Republican House Freedom Caucus was able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory,” Trump tweeted Monday night, three days after enough of its members refused to back the healthcare bill crafted by Trump and House GOP leaders that they had to pull it from the floor. “After so many bad years they were ready for a win!”
As Washington oddsmakers are calculating the lines on the Freedom Caucus’ fate, many on Capitol Hill are placing their bets that more will follow the lead of Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and leave the group.
“There’s a consensus that there will be more defections” of “soft” members, said an aide to another Trump ally. “They lost quite of bit of the good favor they had within the White House. We think [Trump] has come around to seeing them as an obstacle rather than an ally.”
Trump “absolutely” is the best person to tell the Freedom Caucus that the time for obstruction is over, Rooney said. “Because it gives people like me a little bit of cover to say what I really think.
“Whether or not they’re getting the message from the president that he’s just going to sit there and take negations that are not honest and be fine with that,” is unclear, Rooney said about Freedom Caucus members’ extended dealings with the White House that did not end the way Trump envisioned. “He doesn’t have to be. He’s in a different situation than Speaker Boehner or Speaker Ryan is — that he needs to sort of kinda try to keep them in the fold as much as possible. I don’t think that President Trump feels that he needs to do that as much,” said Rooney, who is a member of the House whip team.
Trump wasted no time in proving that he does not, as over the weekend he invited Democrats to essentially take the Freedom Caucus’ place at the table.
Another beneficiary of what most House Republicans consider the conservative bloc’s overreach could be the Republican Study Committee. That caucus, which counts roughly two-thirds of all House Republicans among its ranks and from which the Freedom Caucus spun, brokered a deal with Trump and then pledged its votes.
The RSC laid down its marker and “once we got to that point, we lived up to our word,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., told reporters Monday night. “Now we’ve created credibility with the administration so they can say, ‘OK, these guys are conservatives; they’re reasonable; you can count that what they say, they’re going to do.'”
Most members and GOP aides say that at a minimum, the Freedom Caucus lost sway with Trump.
“I doubt he’ll commit to their ‘ask’ again,” said one top aide to a Trump ally. “So in that regard I think they did do a lot of damage to their clout.”
Clearly White House retribution is not far from many Freedom Caucus members’ minds.
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., met with Trump but was not convinced the proposed American Health Care Act was the solution to ending Obamacare.
“He said he was disappointed,” Yoho told the Washington Examiner. “He values loyalty, as we all should,” he said before laying out his Trump bona fides. “You look at the people who were out there politicking for him — I did three rallies, my wife was on the bus with [Freedom Caucus Chairman] Mark Meadows’ wife — Women for Trump — we were out there.
“It wasn’t always the easiest thing to do,” Yoho added. “But we believed in his cause. And we still believe he’s going to do a great job.”
Besides Poe, the group that counts 31 recently lost two more members. Loudermilk did not re-up with the caucus for the 115th Congress and Rep. Keith Rothfus, R-Pa., resigned his membership last year. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., and former Wisconsin lawmaker Reid Ribble both withdrew in 2015 as a result of the group’s battles with Boehner, which ultimately led him to resign the speakership.
“Someone already dropped out of the Freedom Caucus,” said a senior GOP source. “That speaks for itself.”
