Well they do because they can "surprise him" in public, in their homilies and in the books they right (like the one Cardinal Muller just wrote!!). 

They are an insurgency, but world-wide.  He can't hunt them down.  He can't drone them out of existence.   They can speak ANYWHERE they are, and push the point right back to him to respond.

He will always be on the defense from this point forward. 

He "owns" the problem of unity...and when it's plain that he has lost his grip on internal unity...while worrying about climate change and other temporal matters...talking with Bill Gates, Zuckerburg, etc.....the Cardinals can lay open the lie of unity. 

The more he yells, or derisively and indirectly refers to these cardinals in his homilies...OR the more he ignores them...the more power he loses. 

You don't understand the real dynamics at play.