The Dissident-Conservative Rebellion in the House of Congress

A continuing essay series examining the conflation of politics and religion.

In January of the this year the 118th congress began with the House of Representatives being held under the control of a Republican party majority. Unlike any previous assemblies of the House before, it was immediately mired into a condition of uselessness by a group of highly contentious and at times combative legislators who clearly and obviously intend to resist any semblance of decorum and orderly conduct. This group is composed almost entirely of members of the the Freedom Caucus which is unique as a caucus in that as determined by the Pew Research Center “Unlike most of the dozens of caucuses and single-issue groups on Capitol Hill, the Freedom Caucus doesn’t publicize its membership, which reportedly is by invitation only.”¹²³

“Ideologically, Freedom Caucus members and allies are among the most conservative of House Republicans, with several falling on the rightmost end of the spectrum.”⁴

Some of the key Freedom Caucus identifiers singled out by the Pew Research Center are that “Freedom Caucus members and their allies also have spent decidedly less time in the House than other members of the GOP conference” and that geographically “Freedom Caucus members and allies are more likely to come from the South than non-Freedom Caucus Republicans” and most significantly of all “In January 2021, the Freedom Caucus was almost unanimous in opposing the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump.”⁵

One of the first indications that the Freedom Caucus intended to derail the House of Congress’ long standing history of decorum and orderliness took place during “the first day of the new Congress” which came ”to an abrupt, messy end” as per reporting according to the Associated Press⁶ that focused on Representative Kevin McCarthy’s bid for the House Speaker’s position. Further details contained within the report describe how “It was a tumultuous start to the new Congress and pointed to difficulties ahead with Republicans now in control of the House.” While “Tensions flared among the new House majority, and all other business came to a halt” and “Lawmakers’ families waited around, as what’s normally a festive day descended into chaos, with kids playing in the aisles or squirming in parents’ arms.”⁷ In other words a circus and harbinger that provided a preview of how “a new generation of conservative Republicans, many aligned with Trump’s Make America Great Again agenda, want to upend business as usual in Washington, and were committed to stopping McCarthy’s rise without concessions to their priorities.”⁸

While McCarthy eventually managed to be voted into the position of Speaker of the House it was not until after fifteen rounds of voting; but on that first day of the 118th congress twenty Republicans who voted against him stood out. Reporting by The Daily Signal, a Heritage Foundation multimedia news platform, on that day’s events named the twenty Republicans who voted against McCarthy.⁹ At this point in time the general American public had little knowledge of the Freedom Caucus, that would not remain the case for much longer.

On the second day following the first day’s circus acts of the Republican party the Conservative Action Project, which is an arm of the “Christian Right’s secretive and powerful Council for National Policy,” (and another organization with a hidden, anonymous membership)¹⁰ published a letter with a “Call for New House Leadership”¹¹ signed by 72 significant well known conservatives; this list of names is a veritable who’s who of movers, players, and shakers of movement-conservatives many of whom have direct ties to and are deeply involved within numerous Project 2025 advisory board member organizations, it is also a rare public display of the breadth, depth, and length of just how far, deep, and wide the hierarchy of determined conservative leadership-soldiers extends for control of American government systems in their common cause against democrats, liberals, and ultimately the average American citizen.

As can be seen from the start of the Republican Party’s stewardship of the House of Representatives this past January the Freedom Caucus wasted no time whatsoever in asserting itself as the de facto first on the beach assault team fighting to create a beachhead for a MAGA counter-revolution¹². Later during the middle of the year the debt-ceiling crisis created by Representative McCarthy’s reneging on a government funding agreement entered into with President Biden¹³ would serve the Freedom Caucus’ purposes of continuing to cause chaos and dysfunction within the federal government.

The art of rewriting the deal

Under pressure from the Freedom Caucus, McCarthy backed away from the deal he cut in late May with President Biden to avoid a debt default and set spending targets for the next two years. Biden signed it into law on June 3.¹⁴

As had been the plan all along for the then still by and largely hidden benefactors of the Freedom Caucus the core of the battles over the country’s financing priorities and the Freedom Caucus threats to shut down the government focused on culture war objectives. In order to better understand the Freedom Caucus and its culture war objectives it is necessary to look at the primary organization that provides first-hand support for its members in their war against the Federal Government, doing so will help to reverse-engineer an understanding of the true agents, entities, and impetus that comprise movement-conservatism and its ultimate end-purposes. It has been my goal all along to develop the information needed into the intelligence necessary for understanding the dissident legislators and their advancement of a dissident-conservatism¹⁵ to create a useful and valuable body of knowledge for anyone who is genuinely and truly motivated and committed to fighting and defeating MAGA in all its forms and manifestations. It is also my hope that anyone reading my work will see the great value in becoming better acquainted with not only how our American government systems operate and work, but also will develop a better understanding of the many concepts and principles that have shaped and formed our country’s democratic republic, as found in its history.

The things that are happening today are in many ways tied directly to the various iterations over time of the interactions between the Federal Government and the States that make up its union. For the past year since January the Freedom Caucus has essentially held the House of Representatives hostage. While the most obvious battleground has been the Federal Budget, another area of concern under attack directly by the Freedom Caucus has been the Federal Government workforce as can be seen in its attempts to “resurrect the Holman Rule from its legislative grave” which in its time “this type of overt political control over the federal workforce was the norm following the Civil War.”¹⁶ The cold civil war has as its ultimate purpose on the part of dissident-conservatism a much larger ulterior purpose as next discussed.

By this point in time many have become aware of the plans of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its sibling organization the America First Policy Institute’s America First Transition Project to subvert and replace the next and all future White House Administrations with a thoroughly conservative friendly agenda and staffing, with further plans to reshape America into a Christian nationalist society; as can be seen in the following quote from the America First Policy Institute website:

“The idea of mixing religion and public discourse has been made into an untouchable idea in the U.S., but in reality, God has called His Church to be active in the issues of our day. This sermon series will underline the biblical foundation for each of America First Policy Institute’s 10 foundational pillars for America. Without the guidance of the Holy Bible in a world full of evil, it is impossible to safeguard the future of America for the next generation. Our Christian and biblical values over the last two centuries matter. The extraordinary progress, prosperity, freedom, and equality it has produced matters. The Church in the U.S. must play a significant role in standing for the values and freedoms that have made America the most prosperous nation on Earth. This is not about building a state religion; it’s about maintaining the country’s foundational Judaeo-Christian values that secured the Nation’s future over the last two and half centuries.”¹⁷

As can be seen in the following passage taken from

Heather Cox Richardson

’s most recent publication Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, Extremist attempts to hold the National Government finances hostage has taken place previously and was also recognized then as “a form of revolution."

“Retaking control of Congress [1879], they believed they had a mandate to get rid of the power of the federal government to protect civil rights, recreating the hierarchical society the United States had utterly rejected fifteen years before or destroying the government in the process.

Determined to get rid of the new nationalism and restore states’ rights as the law of the land, they refused to fund the government. One southern representative told The New York Times, “The great blunder of our section was in abandoning our seats in Congress in 1861.” That would never happen again, he said; they would stay in Congress and control both the South and the North.

Republican president Rutherford B. Hayes and House minority leader James A. Garfield of Ohio recognized that an extremist faction in Congress forcing its will on the country by holding government finances hostage was a form of revolution. If the extremists’ tactics worked, this would be only the first of their demands, and the country would fall, as one Democrat said, under “the absolute despotism of… irresponsible and unrestrained” partisans.

Popular opinion swung behind the Republicans, and the former Confederates backed down. Caving to the extremists destroyed the Democrats in the upcoming election, when Republicans reversed their recent losses and put Garfield, now famous for his stand against those who wanted to defund the government, into the White House on a platform of protecting Black rights.”¹⁸

Today’s dissident-conservatism counter-revolutionary efforts pose a genuine danger for all who truly love and cherish their liberal freedoms,and must be resisted in every way possible. The next essay will pick up with a continued examination of the Freedom Caucus and its hidden benefactors and their objectives of dominating our country for their high and mighty non-existent deity.

Robert J. Rei, November 16, 2023

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley

1. “Freedom Caucus likely to play a bigger role in new GOP-led House. So who are they?” Drew DeSilver, January 23, 2023, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/23/freedom-caucus-likely-to-play-a-bigger-role-in-new-gop-led-house-so-who-are-they/ Retrieved November 15, 2023

2. Interestingly enough another group that maintains its members anonymity is the Teneo Network, a significant member of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 advisory board. (https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/, https://www.teneonetwork.com/)

3. (“Its co-founder described Teneo as “private and confidential” in one presentation, and the group doesn’t disclose the vast majority of its members or its funders.”) “Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance: Leonard Leo, a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, is now the chairman of Teneo Network, a group that aims to influence all aspects of American politics and culture.” Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented, ProPublica, March 9, 2023, https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents Retrieved November 15, 2023

4. See note 1

5. See note 1

6. "McCarthy vows to stay in speaker’s race, with Trump backing” Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri, and Kevin Freking, January 3, 2023, Associated Press, https://apnews.com/article/biden-politics-us-republican-party-united-states-house-of-representatives-kevin-mccarthy-8b1d6cdf0d75dfc95b195c301f9ae344 Retrieved November 15, 2023

7. Ibidem

8. Ibidem

9. "20 Republicans Who Voted Against Kevin McCarthy for House Speaker” Samantha Aschieris (Senior News Producer), January 3, 2023, The Daily Signal (a Heritage Foundation multimedia news platform), https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/01/03/20-republicans-who-voted-against-kevin-mccarthy-for-house-speaker/ Retrieved November 15, 2023

10. “This is the full membership list of the Christian Right’s secretive and powerful Council for National Policy” Max Blumenthal, August 30, 2020, The Grayzone (“an independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire.” https://thegrayzone.com/about/) https://thegrayzone.com/2020/08/30/membership-list-powerful-secretive-christian-right-america/ The following note number 11 focuses on the Council for National Policy which is the parent organization of the Conservative Action Project.

11. “Conservatives Call for New House Leadership” (Publicly posted letter signed by 72 signatories) January 4, 2023, Conservative Action Project, https://conservativeactionproject.com/conservatives-call-for-new-house-leadership/ (“The Conservative Action Project (CAP) was founded in 2008 by many conservative leaders with former Attorney General Edwin Meese III serving as Founding Chairman. CAP is currently chaired by Hon. J. Kenneth Blackwell and is designed to facilitate conservative leaders working together on behalf of common goals. Participants include the CEOs of more than 100 organizations representing all major elements of the conservative movement – economic, social, and national security.” https://conservativeactionproject.com/) Retrieved November 15, 2023

12. “Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is a sort of counter-revolution, and the only road forward.” This quote with its idea of “counter-revolution” originated from an essay titled ““Conservatism” is no Longer Enough” by Glenn Ellmers (Claremont Institute’s Salvatori Research Fellow), published online March 24, 2021, by The American Mind (A publication of the Claremont Institute), https://americanmind.org/salvo/why-the-claremont-institute-is-not-conservative-and-you-shouldnt-be-either/ (Retrieved November 11, 2023) and is quoted and briefly disccused in my previous essay:

The puzzle of America’s MAGA problem

13. “Democratic leader accuses McCarthy of reneging on budget deal with Biden” Mike Lillis, June 13, 2023, The Hill, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4047677-democratic-leader-accuses-mccarthy-of-reneging-budget-deal-biden/ Retrieved November 15, 2023

14. "House and Senate on a collision course toward a government shutdown (again)” Susan Davis, June 28, 2023, National Public Radio (NPR), https://www.npr.org/2023/07/28/1190242535/house-and-senate-on-a-collision-course-toward-a-government-shutdown-again Retrieved November 15, 2023

15. For reference I have previously discussed the idea of “dissident-conservatism” in the following essay:

Dissident-Conservatism & Christian Nationalism

16. “House Republicans are holding the federal workforce hostage” Kevin Owen (opinion contributor), April 23, 2023, The Hill, https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3962858-house-republicans-are-holding-the-federal-workforce-hostage/ Retrieved November 15, 2023

17. “The Biblical Foundations” America First Policy Institute, Retrieved November 15, 2023, https://americafirstpolicy.com/the-biblical-foundations

18. Heather Cox Richardson, DEMOCRACY AWAKENING: Notes on the State of America, New York, NY: Viking, 2023, 232-233