The Freedom Caucus, the collection of the House GOP’s most far-right members, will abide many things, from insurrection to flirtation with white supremacists. But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the biggest political celebrity among its collection of lesser-known loons and extremists, apparently stepped over the line.
We have now learned the caucus voted two weeks ago to give Greene the boot. Yet like any good cabal of revolutionaries, the Freedom Caucus is tight-lipped about its internal doings. Not only is its precise number of members a secret, but as NBC News reported, “it’s still unclear whether that vote was successful.” A Republican source told NBC News that since the vote “Chairman Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Greene have had multiple conversations. But … Perry has not directly notified Greene that she has been kicked out of the caucus.”
What’s really driving this divide is a difference of opinion about power and how to use it.
However this bizarre twist is resolved, the split between Greene and her Freedom Caucus colleagues is very real. It did not come about because one of her regular outbursts was finally too embarrassing (though apparently Greene’s recent argument on the House floor with fellow caucus member Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., in which Greene called Boebert a “little b—-,” didn’t help). What’s really driving this divide is a difference of opinion about power and how to use it.
The Freedom Caucus was born in 2015, created by a group of hard-right members who decided that the various collections of conservatives within the House GOP weren’t doctrinaire enough. While members of Congress will create a caucus at the drop of a hat — there are a few hundred of them, from the familiar (the Congressional Black Caucus) to the obscure (the Congressional Hockey Caucus) — the Freedom Caucus founders hoped the group could pull the GOP to the right so it would slash away relentlessly at the federal government, at least the parts of it conservatives don’t like.
Those founders had come from the Tea Party movement, which was petering out at the time; they included then-Rep. Ron DeSantis, the noted shirtsleeves shouter Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and two future chiefs of staff to Donald Trump, Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. Their approach seemed to be built on insider maneuvering fed by an understanding of the institution and their party, combined with a firm commitment to bringing government to its knees.
After 2016, the caucus devoted itself to the cult of Donald Trump, but once Joe Biden won back the White House, it could return to its obstructionist roots. And that’s where things have gotten complicated.
How does a group like the Freedom Caucus get what it wants? The simple answer is by causing trouble. The group’s leader, Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., is best known for his role in helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election. The other members are not exactly a group of legislative geniuses; they didn’t come to Washington to make laws, they came to tear things down.
But not wanting to legislate isn’t the same as not wanting power. And their model is a simple one: They exert influence by means of threats. They have to be feared by their own party’s leadership. If they stick together and threaten to cause a government shutdown or even a default on America’s debts, they can extract concessions in the form of deep cuts, typically to domestic spending.
Greene decided she’d rather be McCarthy’s ally than his enemy.
In its early days, the caucus made life miserable for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who eventually decided he’d rather retire than deal with this bunch of political hooligans. When Republicans took back the House in 2022, Freedom Caucus members figured they could do something similar to new Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
Which is where we return to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is just about the last person you’d think would become an inside operator. She’s more of an internet influencer than a legislator; her idea of lawmaking is to introduce pointless impeachment resolutions. In fact, she and Boebert were arguing about their dueling measures to impeach Biden.
But Greene decided she’d rather be McCarthy’s ally than his enemy. She backed his bid for speaker when other Freedom Caucus members withheld their support. Then when time came to make good on America’s debt at the end of May, Greene voted with McCarthy, more moderate Republicans, and (horror of horrors) Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.
While the debt limit increase came with some spending cuts, they weren’t nearly as deep or as painful as people on the right had hoped. Members of the Freedom Caucus were livid; some even contemplated trying to oust McCarthy from his position as speaker. But they had no power to do anything about it.
For the Freedom Caucus, it was perhaps the most important moment of the 118th Congress. With a gun held to the head of the American economy, Republicans had their chance to extort real concessions to advance their goal of a dramatically more limited federal government. Instead, they had to eat what caucus member Chip Roy, R-Texas, called “a turd-sandwich.”
And Greene was on the other side. Her arrangement with McCarthy is simple: She gets to be close to the speaker, and he gets her presence as a validator that he’s still fighting the good fight against Biden and the left. And it means that when he decides to pull back from the brink in order to contain the political fallout from his party’s recklessness, she’ll be there with him.
That leaves the rest of the Freedom Caucus in a familiar position for hard-right true believers: angry and frustrated at both the continued existence of a large federal government and their inability to do much about it. But one thing they could do is tell Marjorie Taylor Greene they don’t want her in their club anymore. And they’re struggling to even do that. It’s a sign of just how impotent they’ve become.
Paul Waldman
Paul Waldman is an author and commentator whose work has appeared in a number of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, where he is a regular columnist.
