The Irrefutable Case for Paul Ryan

The Irrefutable Case for Paul Ryan

American Spectator - Thursday October 22, 2015

(UPDATE: On Wednesday evening, the Freedom Caucus announced that a “supermajority” of its members support Paul Ryan for Speaker. While they did not reach the 80 percent threshold of the caucus members needed to issue a formal endorsement, this is, as Rep. Ryan put it, “a positive step toward a unified Republican team.” Ryan’s becoming speaker is still no sure thing, though more likely than it was Wednesday morning. Some Freedom Caucus members seem hesitant to switch their endorsement from Rep. Daniel “Not the Dictionary Guy” Webster; perhaps they should have thought of that before endorsing someone who never had a chance to win the job. The group’s official statement notes that “While no consensus exists among members of the House Freedom Caucus regarding Chairman Ryan’s preconditions for serving, we believe that these issues can be resolved within our Conference in due time.” Some conservative writers are hoping aloud that Ryan will not run for Speaker if he does not have an official endorsement of the caucus as he previously sought; it is, as it should be, unlikely that the difference of a single-digit number of votes within the Freedom Caucus will cause Ryan to turn away from this path. Despite the consensus within the Freedom Caucus, I expect continuing griping and sniping from the usual suspects…)

“Unacceptable,” says Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). “Obscene,” says a Tea Party group. A conservative “death warrant,” says a well-known right-wing pundit.

These people, who have me wondering whether those who shape conservatives’ opinions or cast votes representing us in Congress really care about the country more than hearing their own voices, are objecting to conditions laid down by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) for him to reluctantly agree to replace John Boehner as Speaker of the House.

The rule and operating policy changes for the House that Rep. Ryan suggested were put forward as items to benefit the party, the Congress, and the country; Ryan emphasized that these changes are a good idea, and perhaps absolutely necessary to return the House to being a functional legislative body, whether or not he becomes Speaker.

As usual, Paul Ryan is right.

A personal note before continuing: I’ve known Paul Ryan since before his first election to Congress and supported him with a contribution in that first campaign. (We also had a few beers at a Chicago White Sox game, although I’m a Cubs fan. Hey, at least they made the playoffs.) He was then and remains today an intelligent, funny, slightly nerdy, patriotic, policy-minded, family-oriented, self-effacing true gentleman.

Paul Ryan is a policy wonk’s policy wonk, a man who has his dream job as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and whose political aspirations relate solely to trying to make this country a better place for his three children — and your children as well. He did not run for president and, much as in this case, did not want to run for vice president but has a sense of public duty that is rarely found in politicians of this or any era if convinced that he is truly the right person at the right time to do something meaningful.

Although I do not agree with every vote he has cast, I defy you to name a member of Congress who has done more to further a national discussion on the proper role of government and on how, particularly when it comes to federal spending and taxation, the federal government can be reformed in accordance with our Founding principles and common sense.

How many of today’s squawking right-wingers won election by campaigning on Ryan’s “Roadmap” budgets? Almost all of them? How many of them, in the absence of Ryan’s reforms, would have shown the political cojones Ryan did by taking on entitlement reform? In his own quiet way, Paul Ryan blazed a trail for those very same principled conservatives who are now threatening to oppose him.

As the Washington Bureau Chief of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (by far Wisconsin’s largest circulation newspaper) put it, “Paul Ryan is not only more conservative than the vast majority of his House Republican colleagues, but he would be the most conservative House speaker in our lifetime…”

The most controversial change Ryan has proposed — again, a change he supports no matter who were to become Speaker — would be to remove the ability of a single member of the House to bring a motion to “vacate the chair,” that is to remove the Speaker of the House from his position.

This merits serious discussion as it is an important and legitimate debate within the Republican conference. Some House conservatives, including most members of the Freedom Caucus, believe that House leadership has, over time, steadily increased the power of the leadership team while diminishing the ability of individual members to influence fundamental operations of the House such as committee membership and chairman selection, the content of important legislation, and which bills will actually receive a floor vote.

They are absolutely right.

But trying to use a House rule in a similar way to which the filibuster exists in the Senate — except in this case against your own party’s leadership — represents an ill-conceived tactic that does nothing more than kneecap the ability of the House to function at all. What CEO could function if a single member of the Board of Directors could force a vote on his removal at any time — with the company’s competitors being able to participate in the vote?

Procedurally, it requires a majority of the House, not a majority of the majority party, to be elected Speaker. Since all Democrats would vote for Nancy Pelosi (which says a lot about that party, don’t you think?), a Republican candidate must garner a majority of the House from within his own caucus, meaning (with today’s House composition) that if thirty Republicans do not support a candidate for Speaker, he cannot win.

So do thirty or more out of 247 current Republican members of the House want to impose their will on their colleagues and the nation? Some clearly do. Yet they have the chutzpah to portray Ryan as the dictator-in-waiting. And do to so without any credible alternative. This is the true political obscenity.

The House is, and has been by design since its founding, a majoritarian body. There is a reason that there is no filibuster in the House. If you’re in the minority and you can’t convince others to go along with you, you lose. If you don’t like it, run for the Senate.

More important than your humble columnist’s concurrence that the operation of the House has become far too “top-down” is that Congressman Ryan agrees. That is why he also proposes empowering committee chairmen and members to drive the legislative agenda rather than having leadership simply give marching orders. This is the proper way to deal with conservative members’ legitimate concerns about being too often frozen out of the process.

There is no more credible member of Congress than Paul Ryan when it comes to empowering members and committees. During his budget processes, Ryan would routinely gather two or three dozen congressmen in a room to discuss the budget, to take input and modify the legislation as appropriate, and — of great importance in these days of people neither listening nor talking to each other — to ensure that House members understood both the principles and the practicalities of the legislation so they could explain them to their constituents, to other members, and to the few reporters who care to hear about policy details, particularly from Republicans.

There is no more articulate member of the House when it comes to explaining conservative principles and the policies that emanate from them without sounding like a “right-wing nut.” There is no member of the House more likely to be able to unify the Republican conference and to tame the current disarray and distrust.

Paul Ryan loves his current job. He would prefer to stay where he can focus on fiscal policy and budgets — and there’s nobody I’d rather have doing that — than to be in the blinding partisan spotlight that is the Speakership. Should he take this thankless job, it will be at great sacrifice to his own goals but done in the best interests of the United States.

Critics of Paul Ryan point to his view on immigration reform (which, as the Washington Post put it, is “complicated”), his votes for TARP and auto company bailouts, and his support of Trade Promotion Authority. Honest people can disagree: I am in partial agreement with Ryan on the first, against his votes on the second (and was at the time), and support him on the third.

Still, those who call Ryan a RINO or a liberal are, to put it plainly, liars.

Theirs is not a “little white lie”; it is harmful to the Congress, harmful to the Republican Party, and most of all harmful to the nation. The idea that, as some members propose, a little-known Congressman with less than five years of experience in the House is a preferable choice to a man who has for years been the single best spokesman for the Republican Party, the brains and the ideological North Star of the party, and a tremendous example of what all politicians should aspire to be is somewhere between insulting and insane. I have nothing bad to say about Rep. Daniel Webster; I’m sure he’s a fine and principled man. But he should not (and will not) be Speaker of the House in 2015.

So why the objections to Ryan? For some of the most aggressive conservatives, it is a blend of fervent commitment to principle and believing that Paul Ryan is not ideologically pure enough along with a concern about a primary challenge from the right should they be seen as “compromising” with the “establishment.” Mostly I think the opposition is self-serving cynicism, and I say that as someone who — like Paul Ryan — agrees with the vast majority of the policy positions championed by the Freedom Caucus and other liberty-minded members of Congress.

The problem is that there is a much bigger risk than any one congressman’s career (not that this vote actually puts their jobs at risk).

A Republican Party in chaos would be a tremendous benefit to Democrats, risking the GOP majorities in the House and Senate and handing an enormous gift to Hillary Clinton, as we head into a 2016 election in which many Americans, to include every member of the Freedom Caucus, believe the future of the nation is at stake.

It is hard to imagine this country surviving another four years of anti-capitalist and fundamentally anti-American rule, but that is just what is facing us if rabble-rousing conservative members of the House give the liberal media bright ugly colors with which to paint Republicans as unfit to lead the nation.

In the past, I have repeatedly urged Ryan not to run for president, telling him that any Republican president would sign a solid conservative pro-growth tax reform bill that made it to his desk but that Ryan was one of the only people capable of writing such a bill and articulating its merits to ensure its passage.

So it takes a situation of great import for me to consider suggesting that Paul Ryan leave the job that he has always wanted and, for what it’s worth, that I’ve always wanted for him.

But such is the situation the nation faces today.

Not only can Paul Ryan unify the GOP, he can return the House to being the people’s chamber, and — not to be underestimated as we near one year until a most momentous election — show the nation a face of the Republican Party that emanates strength, principle, honesty, competence, and kindness.

For all of these reasons, and with nearly the reluctance that Congressman Ryan feels in offering himself for a thankless but necessary job, I support Paul Ryan’s candidacy to be Speaker of the House.

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