Ted Cruz for speaker

Whether, and to what degree, Cruz intends to intervene in House affairs is not clear, but when the Washington Examiner said the senator has “meddled” in the lower chamber “on several occasions,” that’s no exaggeration.

In September 2013, just eight months into his congressional career, Cruz strategized with House Republicans privately. GOP lawmakers shut down the government a few days later.

In October 2013, Cruz met again with House Republicans about their shutdown gambit.

In April 2014, Cruz hosted a chat with House Republicans about strategy on immigration reform. A bipartisan reform bill died in the chamber soon after.

In June 2014, on the same day as the election of the current House GOP leadership team, Cruz met again with a group of House Republicans.

In July 2014, Cruz huddled with House Republicans, who took his advice, ignored their party’s leadership, and derailed a GOP border bill.

A week later, also in July 2014, they met again, this time as members were getting ready for their August break.

In December 2014, with Congress facing a funding deadline, Cruz huddled again with House Republicans.

In September 2015, Cruz met privately with a group of House Republicans once more as the party weighed another government-shutdown plan.

And today, with House Republicans poised to choose a new Speaker, there’s Ted Cruz hanging out with House Republicans.

Just to be clear, when the junior senator from Texas meets with GOP House members, he’s not huddling with every House Republican. In most of these gatherings, Cruz chatted with groups of a couple dozen lawmakers, not a couple hundred.

Representative Marlin Stutzman, a fourth-generation farmer from northeast Indiana, came to Washington on the Tea Party wave of 2010 intent on tackling his constituents’ many demands: cutting federal spending, repealing the estate tax and, as he said in his campaign announcement, standing up for “We the people.”

But instead, Mr. Stutzman, 39, and many of his conservative colleagues who eventually pressed for the resignation of Speaker John A. Boehner find themselves serving in a House they describe as of the leadership, by the leadership and for the leadership — where power lies not in big ideas or high-minded debate but in the mighty weight of the speaker’s gavel.

In interviews, in public appearances and in private conversations, the conservatives said it was their shared frustration over their powerlessness, and what they viewed as Mr. Boehner’s refusal to open up the legislative process, that forged their strongest bond and ultimately led them to press for his ouster. Still, the group has been ridiculed for an ideology and approach that seems deeply rooted in a single word: no.

They say their policy positions — drastic reductions in the size of government and lower taxes — are repeatedly undercut by the unwillingness of Republican leaders to contemplate using their ultimate weapon, the power of the purse, to force a government shutdown. Rather than trying to get past the paralysis, Mr. Stutzman and his allies want to use it to maximum effect.

“The Shutdown Caucus — we have been called that,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, clearly unbothered by the phrase. He recalled Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, once telling him in the midst of a fight over raising the debt ceiling, “We don’t want to play chicken on this issue.”

Mr. Mulvaney said he had replied: “Put this issue aside, I’ll play chicken with you every time. You think I am crazy, and I know you are not.”

Mr. Stutzman and Mr. Mulvaney, along with other hard-liners, share an anti-establishment zeal, a profound allergy to federal intervention and a ferocious antipathy toward President Obama. But their ranks, about 40 members loosely bound by their affiliation with the shadowy House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, in some respects defy facile caricature.

“It’s easy to dismiss us as the knuckle-dragging, Cro-Magnon, Tea Party group,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”