There are moments in politics when the official story and the real story are so far apart that everyone can see it.
Montgomery just gave us one of those moments.
Recently, the Alabama House Republican Caucus released a letter declaring its “strongest support” for Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter ahead of the Alabama Republican Party’s winter meeting on March 7. All 75 Republican members signed it. Unanimous.
If you are new to Montgomery politics, that might sound like everyone is on the same page. But you know better if you have been around long enough to know how things actually work.
Not long before that letter surfaced, a recording from a closed-door caucus meeting revealed Ledbetter saying something that raised eyebrows and drew ire across the state: “I could give a shit about the Republican Party.”
That statement was said inside the Republican caucus. Yet, somehow, every Republican member has still lined up publicly behind him without hesitation or dissent.
Maybe every member truly believes leadership is doing a fantastic job and the party platform is just a suggestion. Or maybe something else is going on.
Legislative leadership operates power and leverage. Political power in the legislature runs on fear, favors and punishment. Leadership controls committee assignments. They decide which bills move and which will die. They influence access to resources, fundraising, and the network of lobbyists who finance campaigns.
Play along with leadership and your bills usually find their way through the process. Push back and suddenly your legislation has trouble getting out of committee and the priorities of your district are ignored.
None of this is written down anywhere. But every legislator understands how the system works because they see what happens if they don’t toe the line.
Occasionally, caucus meetings turn into shouting matches where a legislator is singled out and dressed down in front of his colleagues over some perceived offense. Sometimes the warning is even clearer: fall in line or get kicked out of the caucus and the “cool kids club.”
That card exists in just about every legislative caucus I’ve seen – Alabama is no different. Rewards are given for loyalty, while punishment is dished out for dissent. It is a formula familiar to anyone who has studied how cartels or cults operate. Lately, the House Republican Caucus has started resembling both.
Leadership likes to remind members the caucus is a “family,” and families are supposed to stick together. Like it or not, this pattern brings Jonestown to mind.
Over time legislators stop pushing back because they understand the consequences. Eventually the system produces exactly what we just witnessed: a unanimous show of undeserved loyalty – even when the caucus leader has publicly expressed indifference toward the party itself.
If the leader of the Republican supermajority openly says he does not care about the Republican Party, then what exactly is the caucus unified around? Not the platform. Not the voters who keep sending Republicans to Montgomery expecting conservative policy.
Washington faced a similar problem years ago. A group of Republican members concluded that leadership was too comfortable and too disconnected from voters, so they formed the House Freedom Caucus to remind the GOP caucus who they were supposed to represent. By organizing themselves, they created a group large enough that leadership could not ignore them. Suddenly the balance of power shifted.
Do Alabama’s conservative legislators have the same kind of backbone? Because if legislators privately complain about the system but publicly continue supporting it, nothing will change. The pressure stays in place with leadership tightening its grip, and the distance between the Republican platform and what the caucus does grows wider.
At some point someone inside the House must decide that it is time to make a change. And that moment may be approaching.
If the House Republican Caucus continues drifting from the values Alabama conservatives expect, then it may be time for a group of legislators to form their own conservative caucus built around the party platform and answering to voters instead of “leadership.”
That kind of move would take guts. Leadership would not like it, and there would almost certainly be consequences for anyone who tried. But politics has a funny way of changing once a few people decide they are no longer afraid of those consequences.
Alabama needs a few legislators willing to stop fearing the cartel-like pressure inside that caucus, start their own conservative caucus built around the actual Republican platform, and finally say out loud what many have only been willing to whisper. After all, the job was never supposed to protect the leadership cartel. It was supposed to be about representing the voters.
Stephanie Durnin is the director and co-founder of Health Freedom Alabama, a grassroots organization that emerged from the 2021 effort to push back against government mandates and defend individual liberty in Alabama. Since its founding, Health Freedom Alabama has worked to advance legislation that protects medical freedom and prevent policies that threaten it. If you would like to support HB12, the Right to Refuse Act, you can sign the petition here.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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