The “conservative” House Freedom Caucus now is holding its collective breath until the dozen, or so, members are blue in the face if they can’t have their way every time. As a practical matter, they’re blocking the Republican Party from passing bills strongly favored by Republicans, including those self-styled Freedom Caucus Republicans, bills like a procedural rule for a vote on a bill to stop the Biden administration’s efforts to curtail the use and sale of gas-powered stoves.

We hold the floor, crows Matt Gaetz (R, FL). As of last Wednesday, all votes for the rest of the week had to be canceled because of the temper tantrum of these Precious Few.

Just to illustrate the utter foolishness of the children of the tantrum, Congressman Chip Roy (R, TX) complained that the gas stove bill wasn’t thrown into a Christmas tree version of the debt ceiling and spending cuts bill that was just passed. Then he said—and he actually was serious,

We should be serious about forcing votes to get it done[.]

And then he participated in blocking that vote.

This is the same mistake the then-newly elected Tea Party Caucus made, and those members were personally responsible for the failure to repeal Obamacare during the early months when repeal had the best chance. The repeals weren’t pure enough to suit them, they said their version or the highway, and they got the highway on any repeal. Most of those Congressmen learned the lesson of the failures caused by “their way or the highway” virtue-signaling obstructionism.

It’s time now for the crop of Republican virtue-signalers in that “Freedom” Caucus to (re)learn the same lesson, a crop led by Congressmen Roy, Gaetz, and Andy Biggs (R, AZ). Or at least to acknowledge that their “Freedom” Caucus stands for freedom for them and eh for everyone else, and therewith give fatal credence to what used to be a mere trope that Republicans cannot govern.