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," 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.
