House Republicans are pleading with Paul Ryan to become their savior, and according to multiple reports out this morning, he’s seriously considering running for House Speaker, after all. Ryan is widely said to be the only person capable of “unifying” the GOP conference.
But at risk of belaboring the obvious, here’s the question: Why would Ryan’s predicament be any different from that of John Boehner? Wouldn’t that predicament be defined by the same fundamental problem that has reigned for years now?
That problem is this: There is a large bloc of House Republicans — call them Tea Partyers, call them ultra-conservatives, call them radicals, call them the “House Freedom Caucus” or the “Freedom Fraud Caucus” or whatever — that is probably not willing to support anything that President Obama could sign.
I’m hardly the first to make that point, but it still seems to get lost all too easily. Instead, we keep hearing that this elusive quality known as “unity” continues to evade Republicans in the House, and that the right Speaker might be able to conjure up the conditions to make it happen, in vague and unspecified ways.
The Post reports this morning that Ryan, if he runs for Speaker, will look to set conditions that would protect him from reprisal from conservatives:
At the top of Ryan’s list, his associates said, is a desire to lead the House GOP as its spokesman and agenda-setter without the threat of revolt from the right, halting a dynamic that has dominated the tumultuous speakership of John A. Boehner….
Looming over Ryan’s deliberations is a churning frustration among Republicans nationally about the party’s ability to oppose President Obama and a presidential primary field led by anti-establishment outsiders who have made common cause with the House GOP’s right flank….
Ryan’s allies say his conditions for becoming speaker are likely to include an understanding that he would have a free hand to lead without a constant fear of intraparty reprisals.
But what exactly would this look like? Take two of the main battles that loom this fall. Would House conservatives vote to raise the debt limit without unilateral concessions from Democrats? Would they vote to fund the government if funding is at a higher level than under the current sequester caps?
If the answers to those questions are No and No, then we’re back in the same place we always were. Senate Democrats will not support, and Obama will not sign, anything that grants major concessions in exchange for a debt limit hike or anything that funds the government at sequester levels. Before you argue that this proves Democrats are just as intransigent as House conservatives, recall that GOP leaders and many non-Tea Party Republicans in the House agree with Democrats on these matters — they have previously supported raising the debt limit without concessions, and they have already funded the government, temporarily, at higher than sequester levels.
Indeed, the fact that Paul Ryan would probably agree with Democrats and do these things later this fall, rather than stage protracted and destructive confrontations, is one of the very things conservatives are now objecting to about his possible Speakership.
And so, if House conservatives are not going to be willing to do those things, Speaker Ryan would have to do them with the help of Democrats, just as Speaker Boehner has done. He’ll have to stiff-arm the Freedom Fraud Caucus; there’s just no way around it. It’s possible that Ryan might be able to offer some kind of procedural concessions in exchange for assurances from House conservatives that they will not overtly target him for removal if he does that. But there will still be plenty of anger and division, and it’s hard to see how the overall dynamic would be all that different from what it has been for years now.
The good news, as Brian Beutler has written, is that the true nature of this dynamic and what it says about today’s GOP is now so obvious to everyone, thanks to additional factors such as the staying power of Donald Trump and the tarnished credibility of the Benghazi committee, that it’s impossible for even the most determined observers to ignore it any longer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...yan-probably-cant-unify-the-republican-party/
But at risk of belaboring the obvious, here’s the question: Why would Ryan’s predicament be any different from that of John Boehner? Wouldn’t that predicament be defined by the same fundamental problem that has reigned for years now?
That problem is this: There is a large bloc of House Republicans — call them Tea Partyers, call them ultra-conservatives, call them radicals, call them the “House Freedom Caucus” or the “Freedom Fraud Caucus” or whatever — that is probably not willing to support anything that President Obama could sign.
I’m hardly the first to make that point, but it still seems to get lost all too easily. Instead, we keep hearing that this elusive quality known as “unity” continues to evade Republicans in the House, and that the right Speaker might be able to conjure up the conditions to make it happen, in vague and unspecified ways.
The Post reports this morning that Ryan, if he runs for Speaker, will look to set conditions that would protect him from reprisal from conservatives:
At the top of Ryan’s list, his associates said, is a desire to lead the House GOP as its spokesman and agenda-setter without the threat of revolt from the right, halting a dynamic that has dominated the tumultuous speakership of John A. Boehner….
Looming over Ryan’s deliberations is a churning frustration among Republicans nationally about the party’s ability to oppose President Obama and a presidential primary field led by anti-establishment outsiders who have made common cause with the House GOP’s right flank….
Ryan’s allies say his conditions for becoming speaker are likely to include an understanding that he would have a free hand to lead without a constant fear of intraparty reprisals.
But what exactly would this look like? Take two of the main battles that loom this fall. Would House conservatives vote to raise the debt limit without unilateral concessions from Democrats? Would they vote to fund the government if funding is at a higher level than under the current sequester caps?
If the answers to those questions are No and No, then we’re back in the same place we always were. Senate Democrats will not support, and Obama will not sign, anything that grants major concessions in exchange for a debt limit hike or anything that funds the government at sequester levels. Before you argue that this proves Democrats are just as intransigent as House conservatives, recall that GOP leaders and many non-Tea Party Republicans in the House agree with Democrats on these matters — they have previously supported raising the debt limit without concessions, and they have already funded the government, temporarily, at higher than sequester levels.
Indeed, the fact that Paul Ryan would probably agree with Democrats and do these things later this fall, rather than stage protracted and destructive confrontations, is one of the very things conservatives are now objecting to about his possible Speakership.
And so, if House conservatives are not going to be willing to do those things, Speaker Ryan would have to do them with the help of Democrats, just as Speaker Boehner has done. He’ll have to stiff-arm the Freedom Fraud Caucus; there’s just no way around it. It’s possible that Ryan might be able to offer some kind of procedural concessions in exchange for assurances from House conservatives that they will not overtly target him for removal if he does that. But there will still be plenty of anger and division, and it’s hard to see how the overall dynamic would be all that different from what it has been for years now.
The good news, as Brian Beutler has written, is that the true nature of this dynamic and what it says about today’s GOP is now so obvious to everyone, thanks to additional factors such as the staying power of Donald Trump and the tarnished credibility of the Benghazi committee, that it’s impossible for even the most determined observers to ignore it any longer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...yan-probably-cant-unify-the-republican-party/
