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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 think that is a fantasy at our current debt:gdp level. If we want to get the debt to those levels and grow the first cut has to come from spending. There is plenty of opportunity to get there.
How did they fail? Were they tried? Where was the leadership? Non existent.
Exactly how is a small group holding the entire house hostage? Are they making demands? Will they shoot a hostage every hour?
So if a group you disagree with does not agree with you, they are hostage takers. Sounds like an Alinsky tactic.
I agree. Government spending should be as low as possible because it always displaces private spending, which is the only part of the economy that should really count. I only wanted to point out that a balanced budget was not necessarily a good goal to have. A smaller debt than 60% would probably be fine too, but I don’t think we’d want no public debt because that means the Fed would have to buy private assets in order to print money, not that they don’t already own some.
#83. Sounds like Brier Rabbit and the briar patch. “Mr. Farmer, p-l-e-a-s-e don’t throw me in that briar patch! Anywhere else, but not the briar patch!”. Reid either really wants Ryan, for whatever reason, or he really doesn’t want him. A classic case of misdirection? While the tone here has been less than stellar, let’s remember all the promises made about repealing Ocare, defunding amnesty, etc., ad nauseum. We’ve been burned before……..
They have indicated willingness to vote against the party’s choice for speaker on the House floor if they don’t think he’ll do what they want. That’s the source of much of the drama. And it’s common to refer to such tactics as hostage-taking. Whether they would truly be prepared to shoot the hostage is not quite clear.
Since what they say they want are procedural changes, it’s a really bizarre way to go about it. “Caving” to Ryan may be the best thing that could happen to their agenda, because he seems willing to give them a real chance to do this the right way and build consensus on rules changes. Most of them figured this out.
I have to admit, I find the idea of backing our currency with mortgage securities attractive. After all, mortgages have real, live houses securing them. That said, I’ve not taken the time to study seriously whether it actually is a good idea.
It seems improper to take credit for something that happened by accident rather than design, or to take credit for luck when it was good but could easily have been bad.
Billiards has a useful concept for this situation called a “slop shot” (as opposed to a “called shot”) which doesn’t count since it was a fluke.
This was by design, not by accident. When people say that they will not accept X, that’s intent. I see your point, but I think you overstate it.
Okay, so democracy is a nasty, scary proposition, all this disagreement. If the people are in the party, how can they be against “the party’s choice” before the votes have taken place? They have a word for such an organization, where you support the leadership or are considered a criminal…..
I do not necessarily have a problem with them forcing out McCarthy, if they had a Plan B. (Especially since McCarthy did his share of the heavy lifting in forcing himself out. Benghazi had something to do with it.) They didn’t have a Plan B, and it could have ended badly — but getting on board with everyone else’s Plan B works out in the end.
I’ve hit pretty hard the way they’ve handled this all, and they’ve now walked into this absurd position where one candidate holds their official endorsement while another has a supermajority of their pledged support. But Ryan offered them a way to save face and get out of the corner they’d boxed themselves into, with a way forward to keep pursuing many of their goals, and most of them had the sense to take it. They get credit for that.
When a candidate says he’s taking his candidacy to the floor no matter what (as Webster has indicated he’ll do), that’s exactly what is threatened. Essentially, it’s like saying if you lose the primary you’ll make an independent run. Nobody is talking about considering that criminal. It’s not inherently wrong. It’s not always sour grapes. I might support it in some circumstances. Like I just said above, I don’t really have a problem with them sinking McCarthy. But it’s heavy-handed politics, and if you’re going to play it against your own party you better have an endgame. They didn’t.
Amnesty is any plan that allows anyone who entered the country illegally to remain in the country legally. Deportations are not required – they’ve been here illegally for years already what’s the problem with them remaining here illegally for more? Most of the Mexican’s that are here illegally want to return to Mexico at some point anyway. If we can control the border, visa overstays, and eliminate the “anchor baby” defense the problem will solve itself. We don’t have to do anything for the ones already here except deport them when they have a run-in with law enforcement.
Which seems to be a recurring theme with the conservatives in Congress. And part of the reason why some of us are so frustrated with them.
I can’t see that it is healthy for the country to have millions of people in some vague uncertain status not quite under the law.
If you’re happy for them to stay (or at least recognize that this country will not do deportation), why not get it on the books? Far better to know who they are, to increase the motivation to cooperate with the law, to hold employers accountable, makes sure taxes are paid (including back taxes), and so on. It doesn’t have to be that easy to do, and it may well sort out those who truly want to stay here and are willing to make it right. Others will face a more credible threat of deportation and a greater motivation to leave.
I’m not advocating Ryan’s position, or anyone else’s. But I’m unconvinced that the status quo plus border enforcement is a solution.
That’s rich, given the context. That’s just setting unreachable entry conditions. You get in and fight for something that’s worthwhile. In this case, removing Boehner alone was worthwhile. So was defeating McCarthy’s coronation as “next in line”.
We are going to change the way the GOP does business, by exposing it for the parlor game at our expense that it is.
A mediocre plan executed violently right now is better than a perfect plan three days from now. Sometimes the last step in a tactical plan says : re-assess and re-engage as appropriate.
Agreed.
Except for the last part of this particular story — the getting on board with Plan B. That has not been part of the theme. If Ryan can keep getting them to do that — and it’s a big if — we may be far better off.
They now need to prove that they didn’t sell out by backing Ryan. This may motivate them to push back at him to prove they’re not co-opted. Or it may motivate them to work with Ryan to make him a more effective Speaker, to prove they actually accomplished something.
You gotta love the FC peeps and Rage Caucus Ricochetti. They spend a week telling us Ryan is tantamount to Pelosi’s next term and then take credit for him being a conservative upgrade.
A plan (with contingencies) is an unreachable entry condition? They’ve had months to think this through. (Ryan had less than two weeks.)
They wanted rules changes and a more open process. So they established a largely secret membership and a bunch of insider-Washingtonian tactics and language. Their caucus rules evidently didn’t match their goals for the House. They lost at least one original member because he objected to their tactic of acting as a bloc in the leadership race rather than making their case on the merits. They’ve frustrated colleagues they should have been persuading.
They had enough leverage to bring down a Speaker and his presumed successor (with help from the guy himself, granted). They followed up by endorsing a candidate who couldn’t win, is not particularly conservative, and is going to lose his seat. They’ve argued they’re not ideological — but while designed to sound more reasonable that undercut their appeal as the “true conservative” group. They’ve managed to sound stereotypically inside-the-Beltway and less fight-the Establishment, and set themselves up to be thrown under the bus by talk radio when they finally went to Ryan.
Today one candidate still holds their formal endorsement while another has the “supermajority” of their support. This is absurd. It could have ended worse for them, but I feel quite free to suggest they should have thought this through better.
Step 1 — Get rid of Boehner.
Did you expect these guys to go walking around with a plan, marking their chosen successor for elimination by TPTB? This is what, the fourth coup attempt? Things change. The earlier coup attempts were more orderly but failed. The latest one was less orderly and succeeded. Funny how that works.
You mean Ryan was secretly who they wanted all along and letting that out would have spoiled it? If that was the idea, I’ll admit it was rather brilliant.
So no matter what happens the FC is credited with what exactly?
LOL
I am not happy for them to stay, I am just realistic that attempting mass deportations is unrealistic. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t deport them when we they have a run-in with the law, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we should make their lives in the US any easier. If we are more zealous enforcing the labor laws – as in actually prosecuting employers of illegals – the illegals will self-deport because it will be hard to make a living.
The mass deportation canard is just stupid.
That doesn’t really answer my concerns.
I also don’t understand your last sentence. What “mass deportation canard” did I use? Reading my comment and yours, it seems I represented your position in basically the terms you yourself used.
No, I meant what I said. You are unwilling or unable to credit a direct plan to force a change with any value. I get it. I am not trying to meet your criteria — I disagree with your criteria.
I don’t think that you honestly believe that’s what I meant.
Isn’t it interesting that no one recognizes the Rage Caucus “plan” but members of the Rage Caucus? A plan without an endgame isn’t a plan, it’s barely a notion.
“I have a cunning plan, mi’lord. A subtle and cunning one”
I am not aware of any organization called the Rage Caucus.
Wow, hadn’t seen this before. Didn’t realize you wanted it taken seriously.