When a caucus has 36 or so members, they become hard to ignore. A political party tries to control its elected members with perks and campaign cash. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t need or want the normal perks or the money.
Most of the members have self-imposed term limits. They are in Washington for a few years, then gone.
Each ideological rating organization selects which pieces of legislation they feel most reflects a conservative (or liberal) position. For example, one of the 24 bills that the American Conservative Union tracked in 2015 was Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration; another was closing Guantanemo; a third was repeal of the death tax.
Looking at how every one of 435 members voted on 24 bills gives a range of scores from 0 for a knee jerk liberal like Nancy Pelosi to 100 for a perfect conservative like Mark Meadows the Chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
There is quite a range within both major parties. In the Senate, for example, the most liberal Republican is Susan Collins of Maine who votes the conservative position only 46% of the time over 18 years in Congress. Before leaving the Senate to become U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions voted conservative 94% of the time over 18 years.
On the Democrat side, Barbara Boxer voted conservative 4% of the time over 24 years while Florida’s Bill Nelson has voted conservative 28% of the time over 25 years.
So most of these guys were in during the Obozo years.
So in other words, the conservative ratings don’t matter because the votes they held were meaningless. A dust bunny could have gotten a 100 percent rating over the last 8 years with no risk at all.
When they had to vote on something important and involved political risk, like the Speaker of the House, they voted lockstep establishment choice Ryan.
Color me skeptical about their motives.