The Flea on the Tail Wagging the Dog

When the "Freedom Caucus" ousted John Boehner they claimed to represent "the will of the American people."

So, exactly how representative of America are the 38 Republicans who make up the group that made John Boehner go home crying?

That's something we can figure out with a ballpark estimate: how many people actually voted for these 38 guys (and they're all guys but one) as a percentage of the population of the United States?

The average size of a congressional district is 710,767. The average turnout nationwide in 2014 was 36.6%. The population of the United States is about 322 million.

The final number we need to know is the average margin of victory. Of the Republican seats, most (192) were won by 20% or more, so we'll assume on average that 60% of the votes were cast for the "Freedom Caucus" winner.

If we multiply all this out, we get

38 "Freedom Caucus" members ˟ 710,767 people per congressional district ˟ 36.6% voter turnout ˟ 60% victory margin = 5.9 million people who voted for a Freedom Caucus member

How representative is that of the population of the United States?

5.9 million "Freedom Caucus" voters / 322 million Americans = 1.8%

The "Freedom Caucus" represents the will of less than 2% of the population of the United States. Yet they somehow think that they should be able to control every policy detail for the rest of the country and dictate who the speaker of the House should be.

The "Freedom Caucus" and the Tea Party represent a tiny percentage of the American population. Because they stay inside the bubble 24/7, associating only with themselves, and only watching Fox News and listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, they have fooled themselves into thinking they are in the majority.

But in their hearts they know the truth: the reason they're so hysterical is that they are drastically outnumbered, and with each passing year more and more of them are dying off.

The Republican Party barely escaped total implosion with the Boehner resignation. The old saw about the tail wagging the dog doesn't even apply: the "Freedom Caucus" is the flea on the tail of the dog.

The House and Senate just passed a budget bill that will fund the government for the next two years, freeing us from the tyranny of the "Free Dumb Caucus" threatening to trash the economy every couple of weeks.

The "Free Dumb Caucus" wailed bitterly about the unfairness of "the process." But that process is representative democracy. In a democracy majority rules. And the majority of the House and Senate voted for the measure. (If they want to talk about patently undemocratic unfairness in Congress, they should start with the Hastert Rule.)

Now that the "Free Dumb Caucus" is finding themselves in the same situation that Hispanics and African Americans have been in for centuries, you'd think they'd have a little more sympathy for the historical plight of minorities.