Freedom Caucus bites back
House Freedom Caucus members are lashing out after their failure to destroy the government last week, settling for destroying the only chamber they control. And they made some history, to boot! Eleven members did something virtually unthinkable—on Tuesday, they defeated a procedural rule vote to advance a bill to the floor.
It has been more than two decades since a rule vote failed in the House, and it happened under a Republican that time, too. Back then, the speaker was Dennis Hastert, and the bill was a terrible rewrite of bankruptcy laws that leadership eventually forced through, anyway. This time around the bill they derailed was far less consequential—a temper tantrum over the “freedom” for people to have gas stoves.