Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) started his Speakership off by crossing the conservative wing of his party once again on a big vote, demonstrating his leadership and his integrity by doing the right and politically perilous thing when he didn’t have to. It is yet another reason for Republicans to remind themselves of just how lucky they are that Ryan was talked in to taking the job.
It was clear last week that outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would quickly and quietly compile a kitchen-sink bill that would infuriate conservatives — and that would protect his successor in the months ahead — by removing a minefield of legislative obstacles that could have resulted not only in a government shutdown but in a default on the national debt. Ryan said the process stunk and that under new management things would be different, that this was “no way to do the people’s business.” But he ended up supporting the bill as a way to eliminate uncertainty and create a “clean slate.”
{mosads}In other words, to avert chaos, the Wisconsin lawmaker will compromise. It’s what conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) call “utter surrender.”
Even Paul “The Roadmap” Ryan is old enough to remember when he was considered a radioactive conservative and his bold plans for fiscal rectitude were thought to be a political liability.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), though he later walked it back, used the word “radical” when he described the Ryan budget as “social engineering” during his run for the White House in 2012. The Republican presidential nominee that year, Mitt Romney, was warned not to choose Ryan as his running mate because it would invite attacks on his Medicare reforms.
But when Romney did, right-wing talkers exalted.
Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was nearly rapturous at the time, declaring that Ryan was a member of the Tea Party and that “one of us is going to be part of the campaign … we’re going to win or lose articulating exactly who we are and exactly what we believe and exactly what our vision for America is.” Mark Levin said Ryan was an “excellent choice” for vice president and “an unequivocal conservative.”
Ryan is the original disruptor — not an insurgent who constantly votes no, but a conservative as pure as the protest voters who attack him.
He was willing, before Obama-Care and the awakening of an energized conservative electorate, to stand tall for drastic debt reduction, and in a swing district in a blue state, no less. Yet he is criticized for having supported the Troubled Asset Relief Program, immigration reform, trade promotion authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership and for drafting the last longer-term budget agreement that busted sequester spending caps in a deal with Democratic Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in 2013.
Limbaugh now calls Ryan the pick of “the donor class,” placed in power to enact “their agenda including amnesty.” Levin said last week that Ryan “just isn’t good enough.”
Once Ryan relented to take a job he dreaded, there came new complaints — that he would not spend enough time fundraising for the party if he spent too many weekends with his family and that he didn’t seem to want the job. He has promised his doubters a “clean slate,” a more open process and a conference that will become less centralized, with power dispersed from the Speakership down to the members.
Ryan can bring regular order, he can hold enormous meetings on even the smallest of bills, bringing every last critical voice together, but there will still be dissent and division. The gerrymandered noisemakers will look for leverage even in an absence of must-pass bills and emergencies and cliffs, and the chorus of purifiers like Levin will grow ever louder in an election year. Ryan should plan on it.
But most conservatives should consider uniting behind him. There’s not another, better Speaker waiting in the wings, and chaos and division hasn’t worked out very well.
Stoddard is an associate editor of The Hill.