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The clique was manufactured by the Puppies as an enemy to band together against. You always need an enemy. Ideally a secret conspiracy, so you never have to prove anything. And it's good to conflate several issues (conservative vs liberal, Baen vs Tor, adventure vs agenda, popularity vs art, etc) so you don't get pinned down.
Of course there are groups of people who agree about stuff, and maybe even campaign for each other, but the Hugos are an open book - anyone can sign up, anyone can nominate, anyone can vote - and the line is crossed when you start to act in bad faith, when you put your self-promotion (or your culture-war idiocy) over the good of the field as a whole.
The Nebulas are a little more closed-shop, since it's members of the SFWA that nominate and vote, but there are still plenty of those. The membership restrictions were recently relaxed to allow self-publishers - I doubt this bunch have done their fellow self-publishers many favours - and it seems from my limited engagement with the topic that this current controversy is just a bit of unsavoury self-promotion.
An award is only as good as its winners (and to some extent its shortlists). Gaming the system devalues the whole award, harming everyone - fans, publishers, writers - in exchange for short-term gain where you can cash in on its old kudos before you ruin it.
I've never been a huge fan of the Nebulas - it misses my taste more than some of the others - but I'd say it's probably the second most prestigious SF/F award.
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