Four Republican congressional candidates from Alabama, South Carolina, Texas and Minnesota have come together to form a new "Conservative Squad." Jessica Taylor, Nancy Mace, Beth Van Duyne and Michelle Fischbach took the opportunity on Thursday's episode of Fox & Friends to announce their new coalition. 

Unlike the actual squad—Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib—none of these four women are actually in Congress yet; they're only candidates for their prospective seats in 2020 elections. The other difference is, unlike the popular congresswomen whose relationships began organically, these four only came together for the purpose of being counter to the original.

“We are losing the younger generations of this country,” Taylor, the credited leader of the group, said to Fox News. “I’m so grateful that [the Conservative Squad] is willing to join up and help in this cause.”


With the group of women coming together under the Republican party, the quartet tried to grab the "mantle" of women's empowerment from their Democratic counterparts. 

“We see so many women across the country right now—Republican women—who are picking up the mantle and want to serve,” Mace said. “They say ‘enough is enough; my kid and my country are worth fighting for.’”

For what it's worth, the progressive group seemed to take the news of competition well, with Omar tweeting the Fox News segment and expressing her gratitude for being able to inspire others.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Omar tweeted Thursday.

The most interesting part of the conservative squad's emergence is that it's coming after the original squad has been attacked multiple times by both conservatives and President Trump himself. Republicans even went so far as to create the label of the "Do Nothing Democrats" to cut the influence that The Squad and the impending impeachment hearings were having on the party.

"In my first 11 months, I've cosponsored 339 pieces of legislation, authored 15, took on Big Pharma w/ my colleagues in hearings that brought PreP generic a year early & exposed abuse of power," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the president. "In four years, you've jailed kids & made corruption the cause celebré. Try to keep up."

It is unclear if any of the conservative squad members will be victorious in their efforts, but if 2018 is any indication, the odds are certainly stacked against them. According to NPR, of the 102 women elected to Congress in 2018, only 13 were Republican.

Conservative-SquadFox & FriendsFOX-newsJessica-TaylorRep. Ilhan Omarthe squad