I was reading Huffington Post this morning, and one of the lead articles is entitled “House Conservatives Plot Coup Against Speaker Paul Ryan.” The article reports on the latest plan of the House Freedom Caucus to oust Ryan. It also reports on their ransom demands — more Freedom Caucus representation on committees, staff the subcommittees with hardliners, divert designated funds to Freedom Caucus candidates, ponies for all Freedom Caucus members. You know, basically “give us even more power to be completely obstructionist political nihilists, or we’ll gut you like a fish.”
While there’s a certain amount of delicious schadenfreude in having the same lunatics who ousted Boehner viciously turn on the only Republican who the crazy-train that is the current Republican House could agree upon, and while it is always fun to see the Republican Eddie Munster get his comeuppance, the article’s title and subsequent text kept referring to the Freedom Caucus as “conservatives” and “hard-line conservatives.”
Why do we accept this framing? These nutjobs are anything but “conservative.” They are indisputably radicals, who have and want to continue tearing down the structure, procedures, comity, and functionality of the Congress. Their undisguised goal isn’t to legislate, isn’t to compromise, isn’t to be public servants serving the common good. Their goal is to consolidate their own power, to capture the government, to demonize and diminish the “loyal opposition” by a constant barrage of ginned-up scandals and show-trial type hearings.
Let’s start calling them what they are — radicals. Right-wing radicals. Republican radicals. Radical Right Wing Republicans. Hardline-radicals.
Try it on for size with a slight tweak of the HuffPo headline — “House Radicals Plot Coup Against Speaker Paul Ryan.” Sounds about right, doesn’t it? Changes the whole picture, doesn’t it? Instead of honorable “conservatives” striving mightily to preserve what is good and right and true blue American against the tyrannical Ryan, we have a bunch of Radical Right Wing Republicans plotting a coup. It’s alliterative. It ties them to their own framing about “radical Islam.”
But most of all, it is true. They are not conservatives. They are radicals.