“Paul Ryan’s Choice; Speaker or Sanity?”: An Intransigent Group, The Far Right Is Already Grumbling About Him
Even as an energetic group of Republicans try to jostle Rep. Paul Ryan into running for House speaker, the fact remains that the Wisconsin Republican would face a perilous situation—essentially the same hostile environment of infighting that John Boehner has had enough of.
Even if Ryan were to swoop in to save the day, the calculations would remain the same: a class of House Republicans that cannot find sufficient internal consensus to govern consistently without crisis. This is something even the most fervent Ryan fans admit.
“You get the honor of making a speech before they tar and feather you every day,” acknowledged Rep. Darrell Issa, even as he spoke at length about how Ryan should run, though he was considering it himself. “He is obviously dealing with the fact that this isn’t the job he asked for, or even wants, but may be a job that the conference needs him to take.”
“It’s very difficult for anyone so long as any group thinks they have veto power and they can hijack and blackmail the House,” added Rep. Peter King of New York, another lawmaker who is urging Ryan to enter the race.
Following a meeting of the Republican conference in the subterranean rooms of the Capitol, Issa indicated that the private conversations inside were dominated by lawmakers encouraging Ryan to run.
“He’s both vetted and has the experience of now chairing not one but two committees. I think what you’re hearing in there is the preparatory work for a more successful Congress once we have a new speaker, but you’re also hearing people universally, or nearly universally asking Paul Ryan to go home over the weekend and reconsider,” Issa said.
Issa also strongly implied that he had talked to Ryan, and that Ryan had agreed to reconsider a bid for the speakership over the next few days.
But there are already signs that if Ryan were to become speaker, he’d still face an intransigent group of unyielding conservatives—the same problem that made the job so unwieldy for Boehner. On conservative blogs, commentators were also pouring cold water on the idea of a Ryan speakership, arguing that Ryan was soft on immigration and criminal justice.
“Paul Ryan Is the Absolute Worst Choice for Speaker,” blared one headline on the conservative website Breitbart.com; “Will Paul Ryan Be the Next Speaker? I Hope Not,” read another, on the Powerline blog.
“I don’t think it’s the face” of the speaker that matters, said Rep. David Brat, the conservative Virginia lawmaker who unseated former Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “It’s the principle.”
On Friday, less than 24 hours after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made the shocking announcement that he would be abruptly pulling out of the race for speaker, Ryan’s office released a second statement reiterating that he is not running for the position. “Chairman Ryan appreciates the support he’s getting from his colleagues but is still not running for speaker,” Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck said.
Fundamentally, McCarthy and Ryan have similar voting records—the American Conservative Union gives Ryan a lifetime 90 rating, while McCarthy has a lifetime 88.63. But they do differ in terms of overall force of personality and image: Ryan has forged a reputation as the chairman of two committees, and as the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party in the 2012 elections.
Close friends indicate that the drawback for Ryan is that he has a young family, and hint that his wife is a key voice against a potential candidacy.
When Rep. Trey Gowdy was asked what it would take to get Ryan to become a candidate for speaker, he responded, “You’ll have to ask Janna Ryan that question,” referring to the congressman’s wife.
“Paul is going to have to do some soul-searching and decide whether that’s something he wants to do,” added Rep. Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
By: Tim Mak, The Daily Beast, October 9, 2015
“Political War All The Time”: Republicans Turning The American People Into Collateral Damage
There is a time for war and a time for peace, according to the book of Ecclesiastes and The Byrds. In the contest to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House, the Republican candidates chose to sell themselves as full-time political warriors. Forget about the national interest. Their job, as they have framed it, is to smite Democrats.
The security of American diplomats in dangerous places and maintaining America’s promise to pay its debts are a concern to everyone. Sadly, many ambitious Republicans distort the facts surrounding these important matters to fuel their political advancement. In their terms, that means entertaining hard-right voters not tuned in to the big picture. When that happens, governing stops.
Now we are not so naive as to think that a high wall separates governing and politics. But the House speaker needs to know how to avoid political warfare that turns the American people into collateral damage. Boehner understood that much of the time.
One of the aspirants, Jason Chaffetz, vowed to threaten default on the U.S. debt and a government shutdown as a means to yank concessions from Democrats. The Utah Republican’s martial words: “We’re just not going to unilaterally raise the debt limit.”
Huh? Fight over taxes and spending, sure, but compromise America’s reputation for honoring its debts as a negotiating tool? That treats the entire country as a hostage.
After the Republicans’ 2011 debt ceiling outrage, stock prices plunged, and consumer confidence fell through the floor. Standard & Poor’s lowered America’s previously magnificent credit rating. Even though a last-minute fix stopped the horrible from happening, the stunt cost all of us.
Just handing the powerful speaker of the House job to a man suggesting he’d do just that all over again weakens the American economy. If that weren’t sport enough, Chaffetz also backs shutting down the government rather than funding Planned Parenthood.
In promoting his political war skills, the leading contender, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, foolishly blew the cover off Republican motives for their endless investigation into the Benghazi tragedy. You see, Hillary Clinton was secretary of state when a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed at the besieged U.S. Consulate in Libya. Now she’s a strong Democratic candidate for president.
McCarthy said this: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today?”
What clever fellows they are. So dragging America through the details again and again had little to do with reaching a truth on Benghazi — one of a multitude of calamities tied to the violent chaos in that part of the world. It was all about pushing down Clinton’s poll numbers.
Republicans are understandably sore at McCarthy for making that revealing statement. What’s interesting is why a practiced politician such as McCarthy would say such an impolitic thing.
Perhaps when everything that happens is seen as politics, nothing seems impolitic. McCarthy was on Fox News Channel, where accusations concerning Benghazi (and Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state) go round and round in a mind-numbing loop.
McCarthy may have simply lost track of the fact that there’s a voting public outside of the angry Republican base. He forgot that our officials in Washington have duties beyond obsessing about the next election.
As a final thought, let’s note that other democracies have rules in place to temper political warfare.
In Britain, for example, the speaker of the House of Commons must be nonpartisan. According to Wikipedia, “the Speaker, by convention, severs all ties with his or her political party, as it is considered essential that the Speaker be seen as an impartial presiding officer.”
In America, that’ll be the day.
By: Froma Harrop, The National Memo, October 8, 2015
“A Gaping Void Of Their Own Making”: No Republican Is Fit, Able, And Willing To Run The House Of Representatives
If House Speaker John Boehner secretly had no intention to resign, and was instead using the threat of retirement to teach Republican House members that they need him—not the other way around—he’s doing a masterful job. But Boehner was engaged in no such ruse, and the Republican Party is drastically worse off as a result.
After making a series of ill-considered remarks over the past week that underscored his unfitness for the job, Boehner’s heir presumptive, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, withdrew his candidacy for the Speakership at a conference meeting Thursday afternoon. McCarthy, who helped recruit a huge class of conservative freshmen ahead of the GOP’s 2010 midterm landslide, had significant support within the conference. But he lacked the trust of a few dozen conservative hardliners, some of whom comprise the House Freedom Caucus, who have grown frustrated with the existing leadership team for its strategic reluctance to use legislative deadlines—especially those governing appropriations and the debt limit—as leverage to seek substantive concessions from Democrats. As doubts about McCarthy’s candidacy grew, it became clear that conservatives would resist a clean succession and fight his election on the House floor.
This creates a void almost nobody in the House Republican conference is fit, able, or willing to fill. Minutes after McCarthy announced his decision, Representative Paul Ryan, whom most House Republicans consider the only senior member with the skill to bridge strategic divisions in the party, reiterated his absolute unwillingness to run.
“Kevin McCarthy is best person to lead the House, and so I’m disappointed in this decision,” Ryan’s statement read. “Now it is important that we, as a Conference, take time to deliberate and seek new candidates for the speakership. While I am grateful for the encouragement I’ve received, I will not be a candidate. I continue to believe I can best serve the country and this conference as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.”
The most rational outcome, and the most ironic, would be for Boehner to rescind his own resignation, and to cite the chaos that took hold after his announcement as a reminder that the reactionaries who deposed him are completely lost without his leadership. When the people who threatened to fire you beg you not to quit instead, their bluff has been called.
But Boehner’s decision to resign was almost certainly not a feint. He has vowed to serve as Speaker until a replacement is selected, but not on a permanent basis. Somebody else—a somebody we don’t yet know, and whose motives and capabilities won’t be well understood—will have to emerge to fill the power vacuum. Representative Jeb Hensarling—a wily, far-right Republican from Texas—has played footsie with the idea. As a Boehner surrogate, Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole’s name has been kicked around, too, but he’s probably been too critical of Boehner’s antagonists to easily secure the gavel. None of the plausible candidates enjoys Ryan’s unique mix of support among conservatives and trust among the party establishment. But as willing members with broad support begin to express interest, the leadership race will resume, and the election that was supposed to occur today will be rescheduled.
What’s more clear now than it was two weeks ago—and it was fairly clear back then—is how crucial it is for Boehner to use his numbered days to clear the deck for the next Speaker, and most importantly to increase the national debt limit in advance of an anticipated lapse in borrowing authority early next month. The consequences of a default on the national debt are too high to hand the debt limit to an untested speaker, or to allow Freedom Caucus members and other conservatives to hijack the issue. Boehner has committed, again, to remaining Speaker until a new one is selected. If Boehner hands responsibility for the debt limit over to this crew, instead of increasing it unconditionally while he has control, it’ll be his most reckless, cowardly, shameful moment.
Brian Beutler, Senior Editor, The New Republic, October 8, 2015
“Nothing Less Than Total War Will Suffice”: Why Republicans Will Face The Same Disaster No Matter Who They Crown Speaker
Liberals and conservatives can agree on one thing about departing Speaker of the House John Boehner: He was terrible at his job.
Liberals look at how Boehner was yanked around by the reactionary extremists in his party, kept staging showdowns that never got the GOP any of what it sought, and couldn’t unify his caucus for anything more meaningful than 50 futile votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and say, “What a loser.” Conservatives look at how he failed to actually repeal the Affordable Care Act (or anything else), blinked when he stared down President Obama, and generally failed to “stand up” tall enough to cut the administration down to size, and think, “What a wimp.”
They may both be right, at least in part. But what Republicans probably don’t realize is that their next speaker probably won’t be able to do any better — not now, and not after the next president is elected.
Right now Republicans in the House are in the process of picking that speaker, and it has turned into a real contest. Up until a week ago it was assumed that Kevin McCarthy, Boehner’s second-in-command, would waltz into the job. But after he said what everyone knows to be true — that the purpose of the select committee on Benghazi is to do political damage to Hillary Clinton — Republicans whispered “Ixnay on the ooth-tray!” and began looking around for an alternative (it’s amazing what an effect one ill-considered remark can have). Into that breach stepped Jason Chaffetz, a young conservative from Utah who has been seen as an up-and-comer, but nobody thought would be contending for this job so soon.
Unlike any speaker in memory, neither McCarthy nor Chaffetz has been in Congress very long. McCarthy is in his fifth term, and Chaffetz is in his fourth (Boehner and his predecessor Nancy Pelosi had each served 10 terms before becoming speaker). Neither one of them is known as some kind of legislative wizard with the ability to keep his caucus together and shepherd difficult bills through the Congress. That’s partly because they haven’t had the chance, but the truth is it won’t matter.
Think about what the next speaker of the House is going to spend his time doing. Between now and January 2017, the answer is, not much. Boehner is hoping to strike a two-year budget deal on his way out that would mean no more threatened government shutdowns between now and the election, essentially saving the Republican Party from its own representatives in the House. If he succeeds, the next speaker will spend his time bringing up symbolic votes to satisfy the party’s right wing, and maybe starting a new investigation or two (the Select Committee on Why Hillary Clinton Is a Jerk, perhaps?). But he won’t be passing any actual legislation.
That’s because the tea partiers who helped push Boehner out and whose assent is needed for the next speaker to win the office don’t want any legislating, and they don’t want any deal-making. This was what Boehner discovered, to his endless dismay. For that portion of the caucus, many of whom got elected since 2010, nothing less than total war against the opposition will suffice. That war isn’t something you do in order to achieve a policy victory, it’s the whole point of being in Congress in the first place. The measure of success is whether you “stood up” with sufficient strength and resolve, not whether you actually accomplished anything.
If a Democrat becomes president in 2016, that will not change. The vast majority of those House members come from safe Republican seats; the only way they’ll leave is if they lose a primary to someone even more doctrinaire. So we’d have four more years of what we’ve had lately: an endless stalemate punctuated by the occasional crisis, accompanied by conservative cries that the GOP leadership is weak and ineffectual.
And what if a Republican wins the 2016 election? Although it might seem like it would be an orgy of bill-passing as Republicans finally get the chance to do whatever they want without fear of a presidential veto, it might turn out not to be so easy, and not only because Democrats could still filibuster bills in the Senate. Remember how complicated it was for Barack Obama to pass the stimulus, Wall Street reform, and the Affordable Care Act? That was when he had large majorities in both houses. They got a great deal done, but it was a struggle every step of the way.
When your party can ostensibly pass whatever laws it wants, intra-party divisions come to the fore as members try to shape the legislation to their liking and realize that they can extract concessions by being difficult. When there’s actually a real accomplishment in the offing — let’s say a tax cut, or a big increase in military spending, or a restriction on abortion rights — the obstruction of a few members can have real consequences, and that will give every rump faction the ability to extort real concessions to whatever it is they want. The caucus could be riven by divisions between the extremely conservative members and the incredibly conservative members, in which case you’d need a speaker with some deal-making skills.
And in that period of 2009 to 2010, Democrats in Congress were led (and still are) by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, strong leaders with decades of legislative experience who understood how to corral and move the caucuses they led. Republicans may not like them, but nobody thinks they aren’t very good at what they do, particularly Pelosi. On the Republican side you might say the same about Mitch McConnell in the Senate, but would Kevin McCarthy or Jason Chaffetz be able to be as effective a leader in keeping their caucus together as Pelosi has been? Now consider that the Republican House can’t stay together when it has zero chance of passing anything into law. Just imagine what a mess it will be when there’s actually something at stake.
I could be wrong, but I’d be surprised if either McCarthy or Chaffetz is talking a lot to their colleagues about the complexities and difficulties 2017 and beyond could pose with a Republican president, and how their particular skills and experience will help them navigate that minefield. If they are, then they’re more forward-looking than I imagine.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, October 6, 2015
“Cheney For Speaker”: Let Lord Vader’s Dark Force Make A Dent In Washington’s GOP Leadership Black Hole?
Watching Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy – the current favorite to replace Speaker John Boehner – interviewed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week left my heart and mind empty. Deflated. Much like Washington itself, with its persistent leadership vacuum.
As The Onion rightly pointed out this week with the headline “Boehner Resignation Leaves Massive Leadership Vacuum in Congress Intact,” last week’s announcement by the speaker has served mostly to highlight what we all knew, deep down: Our capital city is in an ongoing leadership crisis. Russia telling the U.S. to get out of the way so that it can drop bombs in Syria this week underscores how dangerous this is.
Filling the Washington leadership vacuum is a very, very tall order. It’s why the Republican presidential contest is such big news – it’s terribly important that our next president be exceptional.
A new House speaker probably can’t come close to filling this urgent leadership vacancy, but it would be nice to come up with a decent stopgap until we have a new president (preferably one who commands respect across the country and around the globe).
So here’s the problem with McCarthy and his attempt to step into this vacuum. He seems like a really nice guy. A guy who listens to all sides. A guy who will try to make sure everyone gets at least a little bit of what they want. A guy who might shed a tear over a touching moment – I think I just figured out why McCarthy leaves me hopeless.
With all due respect to nice guys everywhere (and, to be sure, they need more respect and credit in this world), I must implore House Republicans: Please. Not another one. No more Mr. Nice Guys with Gavels. At this moment in our history, that approach just isn’t working.
Here’s what I have in mind: Instead of another man with a big, mushy heart, how about a man whose critics wonder whether he has a heart at all? Someone who commands respect and fear, is brilliant and decisive, who has literally lived without a pulse and now makes due with a donated heart.
I am, of course, referring to Dick Cheney. And, yes, I am suggesting he be the next Speaker of the House.
The Constitution does not require the House speaker to be an elected House representative (which is why some have already suggested Newt Gingrich return – not a bad idea, but I think Cheney would be even better).
Cheney was in the House for 10 years (1979-1989) and served in leadership during that time. He’s been secretary of defense as well as vice president, so whether you agree or disagree with his foreign policy positions, you can’t deny that he knows the subject matter awfully well. And wouldn’t it be nice to have a leader in Congress who’s the smartest guy in the room on foreign policy but isn’t running for president?
There’s something in this for everyone, seriously. Even if you don’t like the Tea Party caucus – don’t you just know that they will be respectfully scared of Cheney? I can already hear them saying, “Yes, sir.” Cheney is the type mere mortals reference as “sir.”
If the ultra liberals get out of line, well, you know what Dick Cheney will say. (Just ask Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.)
And if you want business to get done in Washington, rest assured Cheney won’t screw around with shutdowns or debt ceilings. He’s a Washington workhorse. He can run things.
On the other hand, if you sympathize with the “we’re not gonna take it anymore” government-shrinking sentiments of the Tea Party, you can be confident that the government won’t be growing on Dick Cheney’s watch, unless it involves defeating some international bad guys.
House GOP: It is time. Admit you have no leader and bring in a ringer – someone who suffers no fools. Someone who is smarter, more decisive, more experienced than all of you. Let Lord Vader’s dark force make a dent in Washington’s leadership black hole.
By: Jean Card, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog, U. S. News and World Report, October 1, 2015
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