The story goes: the path to holding your seat in Congress — if you are a Republican in a ruby red-district — was to go far to the right of leadership and obstruct on every turn.
At least that is the way the story went.
Just ask any member of the Freedom Caucus, the GOP hardliners, whose greatest impact on the U.S. House and the country has been to revolt on every move that leadership takes.
They’ve claimed their intent is to stay true to their conservative values. What they have really done is stopped real conservative legislation from getting a vote because they refuse to budge on any issue.
Their impact has been the exact opposite of their pledged intent. In short, they have caused legislation to be filtered through Democratic support because GOP leadership has had to go to Democratic members to get bills passed because Freedom Caucus members just refused to govern reasonably.
However, something that happened last week in Kansas, may have caused Freedom Caucus member to pause in their pursuit of purity when, Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas House member from an expansive rural congressional district, lost his seat to challenger Roger Marshall. Marshall is political unknown not because of anything he did in Congress, instead because of what he didn’t do—which was govern.
In short, you cannot spend your career being against everything, people actually want you to do something when you are a member of congress.
His rival ran on a simple platform: I am going to work for you, period. Not going to grandstand, not going to be obstructive.
It worked so well he won in a landslide.
Of course the news out of Washington was a speculation; it would embolden the remaining Freedom Caucus members. Maybe.
More than likely it makes them hesitate over whether just being against everything for the sake of being against everything is what the American people want.
In short the Empire has struck back — the lesson of Huelskamp is that it will make Freedom Caucus members take note not embolden them and that would make the House under a Republican majority more runnable.
To date there is no evidence that a wave election cycle is going to undo Speaker Paul Ryan or the Republican majority —Trump’s collapse seems to be only Trump specific.
And Republican voters who are either not voting for him or voting for Clinton are still too conservative thinking to hand the keys over to the Democrats down-ballot. They still feel the sting of 2009 to 2011 when that party held the power in the House, Senate and the presidency.
So the biggest change come next January in the House will not be a new party in power, but it may be a new majority that understands that they need to use that power to govern and not obstruct.
National political reporter and columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and host of of the Off-Road-Politics Podcast.
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