Even though it has been discussed by some of the Alabama House of Representatives’ more conservative members, the formation of groups similar to what the U.S. House of Representatives has in the Freedom Caucus has been discouraged by the body’s leadership in past years.
Seemingly for that reason, no such group has come to be in the Alabama House of Representatives. However, if the Alabama Policy Institute’s Director of Policy Strategy and General Counsel Phil Williams, a former member of the Alabama Senate, has his way, that will change.
In an appearance on Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5 on Monday, Williams revealed API is planning an effort that will make such a group a reality with the objective of promoting conservative policies within the Alabama State House.
“[I] tell you what, Jeff — let me go ahead and give you an inside scoop with our plans,” he said. “But we actually are working right now to form that caucus, and I mean as an official caucus. The naming will be something like the ‘Conservative Policy Caucus’ that I referenced briefly a moment ago. But the reality is we are looking to have that. In the Senate with 35 members — if you can get seven members to stand together on an issue, you can hardly get around them at that point. You have to work with them. You have to negotiate with them. You have to care about what those seven members are voting together as a bloc. That’s going to be so important on issues that come up this year, like when you see things like big government spending but no tax cuts, when you see things like whether we are going to reopen our society or we are going to restore the balance of power to the legislature, where the executive branch has done everything this year.”
“I think you’re going to have to have a conservative policy caucus to make sure those things stand up,” Williams added. “For what it’s worth, I’ll go ahead and announce it first on your show. We are working towards that end right now.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.
