Conservatives Take Charge of Committees

Natalya Bardushka / shutterstock.com
Natalya Bardushka / shutterstock.com

When the GOP took back control of the House of Representatives with the 2022 midterms, we all hoped and prayed that would mean some significant and better for our country changes would be coming. At worst, it would mean that Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi might be cut off and shut out of the vicious and all too dangerous power circle in Washington that has long prevented things from actually getting done.

And to be clear, that definitely seems to be happening. After all, with a majority now squarely in the hands of the Republicans, Pelosi and her ilk officially have no control or say whatsoever in just about anything.

It also means that the GOP has now been able to install and replace a good number of committee members throughout the House’s purview.

However, it’s important to point here that, much as we might have hoped, those seats aren’t just going to any old Republicans, despite the Speakership seeming to go that route. No. Instead, it appears that it’s conservatives, more specifically, who are being elected to committee after committee, and even being named chair.

Take the Homeland Security Committee, for example.

As you might have guessed based on its name, this committee oversees national security both at all US borders and in the reality of cyber. Additionally, it is the committee most looked upon when oversight for the Department of Homeland Security is needed.

Now, it is important to point out here that for former House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to take the seat of Speaker of the House, replacing Pelosi, he had to agree to a number of promises from various House members and caucuses. One was supposedly that Texas GOP Representative Dan Crenshaw would be instated as Chairman of this Homeland Security Committee.

However, seeing as how Crenshaw has taken a rather drastic fall from grace and conservatism in recent days, that’s not exactly what happened, regardless of what McCarthy’s wishes or promises might have been.

Crenshaw’s fall resulted from him recently creating quite a stink when he called those in the House Freedom Caucus “traitors” for holding up the installation of McCarthy as the Speaker. The Freedom Caucus is known to be made up of more conservative names like Matt Gaetz of Florida and Jim Jordan of Ohio, all who are and were not so certain that a moderate Republican and one who supports the establishment like McCarthy should be their leader.

On the other hand, Crenshaw seemed quite loyal to McCarthy, even though in his early days of Congress tenure, he was known to be one of the most conservative and least likely to follow such establishment members as McCarthy. Crenshaw stayed loyal to him for all 25 of the votes it took for the now-speaker to ascend to his new title.

And it seems that now, it might have been all for nothing because the newly elected Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee is not Crenshaw after all.

Instead, it is Tennessee conservative and Freedom Caucus member Mark Green, as the Washington Examiner reported.

Like Crenshaw, Green served our military with honor and distinction, completing several tours as a special operations flight surgeon in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. But unlike Crenshaw, it seems conservativism and the need to fight the establishment still runs strong in Green.

And it is for that reason that he’s not only been elected to chair this committee but now serves on seven others as well.

One main reason could be his well-designed plan to keep Homeland Security and border security, more specifically, in check.

For starters, he plans to appoint several staff members to stay and live on the border permanently. This will allow his office to be kept more in the know about what is happening at the border instead of just hearing it third hand from those who have never even seen the problems currently found there.

Additionally, it means that the committee can work in real-time on those issues and more directly with Customs and Border Protection as well as other immigration agencies and authorities.

As fellow Freedom Caucus member Troy Nehls remarked on Twitter, this is a “BIG WIN.”