friday night was different. house republican leaders were blindsided when their plan to prevent the department of homeland security from shutting down was defeated. 52 conservatives voted no because the funding bill didn t also stop the president s immigration plan. in the end, a bill did pass to fund the homeland security department for one week which means once again in just a few days we re going to be facing another shutdown. i was reporting from the capitol friday night and had exasperated veteran republican lawmakers say things to me like how are we supposed to govern? they were at a loss with how to control their own right flank. at a time when american security couldn t be more important. joining me now is a conservative from that right flank at the heart of all of this republican congressman jim jordan who is the chairman of the house freedom caucus formed earlier this year to advocate for conservative legislation. congressman, thank you very much for joining me. i want to ask
blindsided when their plan to prevent the department of homeland security from shutting down was defeated. 52 conservatives voted no because the funding bill didn t also stop the president s immigration plan. in the end, a bill did pass to fund the homeland security department for one week which means once again in just a few days we re going to be facing another shutdown. i was reporting from the capitol friday night and had exasperated veteran republican lawmakers say things to me like how are we supposed to govern? they were at a loss with how to control their own right flank. at a time when american security couldn t be more important. joining me now is a conservative from that right flank at the heart of all of this, republican congressman jim jordan who is the chairman of the house freedom caucus formed earlier this year to advocate for conservative legislation. congressman, thank you very much for joining me. i want to ask the first question that everybody out there is probably
republican party and republican leadership maybe mcconnell. republicans have to tread carefully as far as appealing hispanic voters and looking toward 2016 presidential race. and another key date is the debt limit crisis. mid year we re looking at that to be another key date. a key point in the calendar. sure. obviously with the debt limit it can be a little bit flexible as far as exactly when it runs out. at this point looking at mid year maybe late summer. that s something you saw it last time republicans struggled to get the numbers they needed to raise the debt ceiling. this is an issue that creates tension with the party s right flank. you ve heard mcconnell say repeatedly it s focussed on government funding. he said we will not shut down the government. as you can imagine, this will be another fiscal area where many of the establishment are republicans. those running the show are want going to be tagged as allowing
that the tratic strategy, and i m quoting directly from the article, to the extent that there s been a unifying theme, it s the ongoing effort to portray republican hopefuls as captured by their party s right flank. it s pushed candidates into nearly the same position on far right issues. cotton is someone who came into the house during the tea party wave around 2010 and as as much, someone who s a rising republican star, he s pretty much voted with the conservative side all the way through. so now when it skoms to an election like the senate election, the general election, he doesn t have a lot to show his independence. he s pretty much sided with the right on everything. and democrats are really using that to their advantage against him. not just on issues like the ryan budget, but on issues that
i think some are secretly relieved. and the good the way paul ryan is handling this is he s being an ally of leadership without being an official member of leadership. so he s able to move the conversation away from obama care and bring conservatives along because he has strong political capital on the right and that s important for boehner who sometimes has a trust gap with his own right flank. just on this point, very quickly. i have learned last year that they did a survey, frank lunts did a survey of who the house freshman look to when they came on to the house floor, looked up on the board, score board, of how a member voted. it wasn t the leadership. it was paul ryan. he had the most prestige of anybody among those radical house freshmen. so this op-ed piece is a very important moment. and it does represent, as robert indicated, a kind of step back. and i think you will see us move walking back. towards some kind of a deal. and very quickly exit question to you, ang