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Paul Ryan’s Detractors Have Zero Leverage
Years ago, I was offered a lousy middle-management job at a horrible company. I repeatedly told the recruiter that I wasn’t interested, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I can increase the salary!” No, not interested.
“What if you can set your own hours?” No thanks.
“Look, I’ll start you off with a month’s vacation and…” NO.
After several annoying calls over a couple of days, I finally said, “Look, I’ll take the job on one condition: Starting salary of a million dollars.”
Several seconds of silence followed before the recruiter said, “um … but, really, what salary are you thinking of?” I repeated my demand, trying to suppress a Dr. Evil voice. That recruiter never called me again, having finally understood my real demand: I don’t want the job.
Rep. Paul Ryan has been repeatedly asked, encouraged, cajoled, and begged to take over the Speaker’s gavel when Boehner drops it. Ryan’s answers have been no, no, no, and hell no. But after another week of Republicans insisting that Ryan is the only human being in existence who can unite conservatives and RINOs, Tea Partiers and country clubbers, young reformers and Hill lifers, Ryan had enough.
He finally relented and said, sure, I’ll take the job … on three conditions:
- The House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the moderate Tuesday Group all need to support me.
- Change the House rules so disgruntled congressmen can’t toss me out so easily.
- This better not cut into my family time.
Some members were outraged, as were many on talk radio, and (natch) the Internet. How dare he make demands on the people’s representatives! Never before has a Speaker ordered he not be ousted! He wants time with his family … he should be working 24/7!
How many times does Ryan have to tell you that he doesn’t want the damn job? His detractors should be thankful he didn’t demand a million dollars like one smart aleck I know.
Since modern politics runs on outrage, the fact that Ryan doesn’t want to be Speaker has made the anti-Ryan caucus even angrier. Apparently it hasn’t yet dawned on them that they have zero leverage over the Wisconsin representative. If the grumblers lose, it’s Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; if they win, it’s a much happier Ways and Means Chair Paul Ryan.
So, in their impotence, talk radio complains that Ryan loves his family more than he loves government, and websites scream that Ryan has insufficient interest in amassing political power. Both of those complaints only highlight his conservativism.
Here’s the deal, haters: You don’t want Paul Ryan to be Speaker. Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be Speaker. Since you both agree, why are you yelling at him?
Published in Politics
I don’t support either of them.
I agree with you, but that doesn’t change the lack of intellectual consistency from Paul Ryan in this matter.
If he doesn’t want the job he should say so and if he cares to do so endorse one of the declared candidates for the job.
But he has said so. They want him anyway.
Who is they? It has been a forced bloodletting and negotiation to get the Freedom Caucus sort of on board. Who has called for him to be Speaker other than Boehner, Reid, and Obama?
This is baffling to me. I keep hearing that he has support, but we can’t seem to round up said support.
Ryan will promise to “bend the immigration curve”, resulting in effective enforcement in the year 2525.
Convenient.
How long does the establishment guys think those with a Tea Party/Freedom Caucus aesthetic will stand for handing them electoral majorities, only to be ignored on policy?
Paul Ryan says he will serve if everyone falls in line. Behind whose ideology? That’s no way to lead a plurality. He should have said he’d do his best to make sure all voices are reflected in legislation.
Not excited about Paul. Get me someone who respects our victories.
I respect that the Freedom Caucus isn’t a majority and there are 2 reasons why: invitation only, and self limited to 40 members.
The FC grew out of the RSC which is a majority of the republican caucus.
If the elections of 2010 were not about stopping the Obama agenda using Constitutionally available means, then what were they about?
But that’s the thing: The Freedom Caucus represents a small although not inconsiderable portion of the majority.
They punch way above their weight but they’re deluded if they thing they represent majority opinion in the country. I’m not going to tell them to sit down and shut up, but they need to bend to political reality at some point too. That which does not bend ultimately breaks.
Until Dan Webster or one of these other loud-mouth munchkins can corral the whole party and mount a serious campaign to capture the Speakership they ought to stop cat-calling the people who can.
It’s put up or shut up time, Freedom Caucus.
BDB, please let us know when you’re ready to discuss and argue and debate. Until then, your mockery and dismissiveness and snark just indicate you’re not worth taking seriously.
https://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/fy15_blueprint.pdf
Excuse me, but which major policy initiatives of Obama’s have been satisfied legislatively?
Cap and Trade is dead, Obama has to skirt the Constitution to get the Iran thing done (the Senate acted stupidly in surrendering their power – but that’s not the end of it) and Obama snookered himself with the sequester thing when he called the Republicans’ bluff and they allowed the sequester to happen.
It’s not as if they have veto-overriding majorities over there and public opinion is stupidly against shutdowns. We can’t fix stupid, and the Republicans have to go to war with the stupid army we have not the stupid army we wish we had.
Do you want to blame somebody for all of this? Blame the stupid American electorate for putting too many idiot Democrat electors into the electoral college and too many Sheila Jackson-Lees in the House.
The blame lies there – not with “leadership.”
I’ve read the propaganda. The difference is I did the math here.
James of England pointed out new projections after the sequester being factored in. The spending picture improves, but to get to balance we must sustain 4.7% growth with no recessions for a decade. When has that happened
Except that the leadership you are so fond of ran on a platform of stopping the Obama agenda. These stupid ideas you rail against came from the same folks that disavow them now.
The Iocaine Powder Dilemma!
(EDIT: As I see someone else has already referenced. Ninja’d!)
I’m not sure what your alternate suggestion would have been for a course that the Republicans could have taken. Perhaps there was some Minister-without-portfolio waiting in the wings who would have magically been a better speaker than Boehner or a better Parliamentarian than McConnell? I guess I’m skeptical of that.
Since 2010, none of Obama’s major policies have been implemented. The tension that I mentioned between the executive and the Congress has resulted in a lot of continuing resolutions which has had the effect of constraining government spending relative to GDP growth, which given the alternative (Democrats blowing the budget up as they did in 2009-10) seems pretty attractive if you can’t have what you’d prefer.
For this, I actually blame Bush. Given power no Republican President has enjoyed since Coolidge, he successfully spent more money than Clinton could have dreamed of given a Gingrich-led Congress. He robbed us of our moral authority and now we have to spend the better part of a decade reclaiming it.
Since 2010 we have fully funded Obamacare and the DHS willfully extending what amounts to amnesty to illegal aliens.
I agree Obama has not passed any new legislation. If that is the only reason the republican majorities were earned in 2010/4 we wouldn’t have this acrimonious split in the party.
Agree with you regarding G.W. Bush and why so many on the right are distrustful.
As Maj pointed out, the public is to blame for the Republicans reluctance to use funding as a means of curbing Presidential overreach.
What everyone seems to have missed is that Ryan has flipped off the House Republicans who don’t really want him because he really doesn’t want them or the job they represent.
I’m sorry you’re frustrated, but given the political climate, a recalcitrant President and a public unwilling to see the Government be shut down, what was the alternative? Collective political suicide by the Republicans when they shut the government down? How long do you think they could have kept that act up?
We understand that the deck is stacked in terms of how such things are covered in the media, so why are we discussing just how deeply the party needed to cut its wrists in order to prove its commitment?
Look: The leadership is in the business of polishing [feces.] Is it any surprise that their hands get dirty in the process? Why are we then shocked and upset at them when these [coprolite] polishers who we put there to do this end up with some stink on them?
The fact that everyone caved and gave him what he asked for, doesn’t mean he still wants the job.
It only means three things: 1) they are desperate 2) he’s apparently a good negotiator or 3) he didn’t ask enough (or strange enough) requirements to keep them from pushing back.
According to the political shine men they were not going to Washington to polish said feces.
What do you think the election outcomes of 2010/4 would’ve been had Boehner, McConnell et al said they were only going to polish the droppings?
We aren’t frustrated because they aren’t fighting. We are frustrated because they said they would.
And they have done everything in their power so far to stymie Obama’s agenda. As Maj pointed out – not one legislative policy goal has been achieved since 2010.
The analogy in this article is false. Congress is not a private firm. It is a legislative body based on democratic principles. The principles and dynamic involved is completely different.
What Ryan asked House Republicans for is for them to turn the powers in their office over to the Speaker. If they had done that, they would have been little more than trained seals, with their only remaining choice being whether they support Speaker Ryan or Speaker Pelosi.
Real leadership means motivating people to support you with their own free will. Ryan’s legalistic gimmick is the antithesis of leadership.
Well, they did fight and they lost. What was that hubbub with Rand Paul grandstanding in the well of the Senate and Ted Cruz tilting at windmills and shutting down the government? Did they secretly win those engagements somehow without my knowledge? They didn’t. In fact, I think in the aggregate we probably lost more than we gained.
Why? You can’t win these battles if the people aren’t actually behind you.
We don’t have the people in our corner to the extent that we need to force our will upon a President who holds the hammer in his hand when it comes to the bully pulpit.
You don’t strike me as the sort of person who completely believes things that politicians say in campaigns, right? Surely, it isn’t news that politicians overpromise and underdeliver because campaigns are about marketing.
A basic understanding of where the locus of power resides is in order here. In order to drive policy you have to either have control of both the legislature and executive or at least agreement between the two.
What am I missing here?
This is correct – so, because one of the Republicans’ goals is a dog that doesn’t bark you’re upset with them… for achieving it?
What they didn’t count on was the take-no-prisoners attitude of the President. It’s sort of unprecedented. Most Presidents moderate after being chastised at the ballot box, but Obama doubled down. You have to hand it to him: He knows how to beat Republicans (in the battle of public opinion) because there is a mismatch of tactics between the two sides.
This “full funding of Obamacare” bit is sort of sophistry as well – that was baked in the cake by budgets passed in previous Congresses if I’m not mistaken as a result of continuing resolutions.
They ran the play of repeal. They ran the play of defunding. These tactics failed.
I don’t know what you want from them, aside from the aforementioned wrist-slitting mea culpas or noble deaths upon that chosen hill. “Well, they laid down their (political) lives in defense of that principle. They’re with God now – replaced by Loony Leftists in Congress – but at least we know they died with their principles cleaner than a virgin’s nightgown.”
Your problem is believing that “balance” is necessary or desirable. Obviously we’re taking on too much debt right now, but if we got the debt down to something like 60-80% of GDP, and it grew with GDP, it would be completely sustainable. All that really means in the long run is growing GDP faster than spending, which is totally in the realm of possibility.
I don’t think Ryan is an anti-Scots-Irish bigot. He must be aware by now that many of its [immigration reform’s] supporters are, and while he does supports immigration reform, I think it is mostly out of religious compassion and isn’t very urgent to him. I can see him putting the issue off for a few years until the politics for a deal that doesn’t institutionalize discrimination against poor white people materialize (i.e. one that actually seals the border).
A 2% deficit just means the government is capturing the inflation tax. There’s nothing wrong with that (I’d rather they did this than impose a formal VAT). More than that seems problematic to me, though. I don’t like the idea of running a deficit equal to the economic growth rate, even if it is sustainable. That money should go towards private savings and investment.
So, short hours, no weekends or nights and he can’t be fired, right?
(This deal is insulting to EVERY taxpaying worker who pays this man’s salary, and who would NEVER get this deal in the private sector!)