There’s no shortage of caucuses, groups, contingents, and factions on Capitol Hill, most of which are benign and unknown to most Americans. Ballotpedia published a list of Congress’ caucuses, which currently includes a whopping 461 groups, ranging from the Aluminum Caucus to the Zoo and Aquarium Caucus.
But the official list isn’t comprehensive, because it doesn’t include informal contingents, some of which can wield significant influence. The New York Times reported today on just such a faction — which I’ll confess is entirely new to me.
As the Republican Party has moved further to the right, the fringe has become the mainstream, swelling the ranks of the Freedom Caucus but making it difficult for the group to stay aligned on policy and strategy. The rise of another hard-right faction in the House calling itself “the Twenty” — including some members of the caucus and some who have long refused to join — has raised questions in recent months about where the real power lies on the far right.
Let’s pause here for a brief review of recent history.
For generations, the Republican Party was relatively diverse, ideologically, with plenty of moderates and even northeastern liberals. In time, this didn’t sit well with the GOP’s most conservative members, so in 1973 they created a special group, intended to be separate Republicans on the right from the GOP mainstream. It was called the Republican Study Committee, and it was home to the House’s most hardline ideologues.
But as regular readers know, a problem soon emerged: The more radicalized House GOP members became, the more the Republican Study Committee included most of the party’s conference. Indeed, there are currently 222 House Republicans, and more than 70% of them consider themselves members of the Republican Study Committee.
In time, the Study Committee was seen as a fine faction for run-of-the-mill far-right members, but really conservative members wanted an even more exclusive, invitation-only caucus that would exclude those who weren’t quite far enough to the right. That, of course, led to the creation of the House Freedom Caucus.
Unlike the Republican Study Committee, with its bloated 156 members, the Freedom Caucus positioned itself as the home of roughly four dozen true, uncompromising right-wing ideologues.
But perhaps the Freedom Caucus has reached a stage at which it, too, is lacking cohesion? This is, of course, the same group that kicked out right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, in part because she seemed a little too eager to align herself with her own party’s leadership.
The move served as a reminder: Even Freedom Caucus members disagree with one another over matters of tactics and substance, which is largely inevitable as its membership grows.
It’s against this backdrop that the New York Times reported on the emergence of yet another intra-party faction whose members apparently call it “the Twenty.”
Who’s in it? I don’t know. Why does it exist? I don’t know that either. Does it have anything to do with the 20 House Republicans who initially balked at Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker in January? I have no idea. What does it hope to accomplish that’s different from the other GOP contingents? I wish I knew.
But as someone who’s deeply invested in examining Republican politics at institutional and structural levels, I hope some of my Capitol Hill sources might help fill in the gaps.
