From Reluctant Recruit to Happy Warrior (Paul Ryan is pleased)

Narional Journal ^ | 12-18-15 | Daniel Newhouser

[RKBA Democrat]

Christ­mas is com­ing, and House Speak­er Paul Ry­an is in a merry mood.

Just hours after passing a massive bi­par­tis­an spend­ing bill in con­vin­cing fash­ion, one day after notch­ing scores of tax policy wins and barely two months in­to his speak­er­ship, Ry­an has fully trans­formed from re­luct­ant re­cruit in­to happy war­ri­or.

Now he just has to bring the Re­pub­lic­an Party with him.

“I’m very happy with how the last sev­en weeks have gone,” he told a small group of re­port­ers as­sembled in his Baroque-style Cap­it­ol of­fice. The space has been re­painted with a fresh coat of pala­tial red, part of the suc­cess­ful ef­fort to rid it of the damp to­bacco smell of its pre­vi­ous in­hab­it­ant, John Boehner. So too has the cloud of Boehner’s pres­ence and ab­rupt de­par­ture seem­ingly been lif­ted from Con­gress.

Yes, many mem­bers are still frus­trated, But Ry­an has, to para­phrase his pre­de­cessor, cleaned the barn, and the House is ready to move in­to 2016 on his terms with him at the helm. The past was rocky, but in talk­ing about the fu­ture he is calm and con­fid­ent.

“When John Boehner threw the curve­ball of his unanti­cip­ated resig­na­tion, it threw the place in­to a bit of chaos. Mem­bers were very wor­ried about where this was all go­ing, and it looked like Con­gress was go­ing to seize up and come to a screech­ing halt,” Ry­an said. “People looked at that situ­ation around Con­gress and saw all that they came here to do, to work on, ba­sic­ally be­ing all for naught. That we were about to have such a chaot­ic crash, that the hard work that they took to get here, to le­gis­late, to make a dif­fer­ence, was go­ing to be in vain.”

In his speak­er­ship, though, Ry­an said his mem­bers see a change to a cul­ture in which con­ser­vat­ives can uni­fy and all mem­bers have le­gis­lat­ive in­put. He points to the just-passed om­ni­bus and tax bill, as well as the re­cently passed early-edu­ca­tion and high­way au­thor­iz­a­tion bills as proof Con­gress is back to work.

To be sure, the om­ni­bus bill passed un­der his watch came to­geth­er in a top-down pro­cess more re­min­is­cent of his pre­de­cessor. Ry­an said even he is dis­gus­ted with the pro­cess, but he wanted to close it out to move on to a new chapter. Even still, he said mem­bers feel they have had more in­put than in the re­cent past.

“Since we have re­stored that fair­ness to the pro­cess—I have done everything I said I was go­ing to do—I think people are re­lieved, and they now real­ize the out­come doesn’t have to be per­fect, it may not even be what they want, but at least they had a fair chance of af­fect­ing the out­come,” he said.

Ry­an said he honed his se­rene de­mean­or dur­ing the chaos of the 2012 pres­id­en­tial cam­paign trail, when he was Mitt Rom­ney’s run­ning mate. He has learned to un­plug and does not get rattled or fazed by high praise or deep cri­ti­cism, es­pe­cially from the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment that birthed him and now seems ready to dis­own him.

Tak­ing that les­son away from a pres­id­en­tial con­test seems quaint giv­en the any­thing-but-Zen ten­or of the cur­rent GOP primary race. Ry­an said he re­cog­nizes the tone of his party’s would-be pres­id­ents is dif­fer­ent from his own, but that it’s just the nature of the primar­ies and things will change come the gen­er­al elec­tion. He blames the ran­cor, un­sur­pris­ingly, on Pres­id­ent Obama’s ad­min­is­tra­tion, which he said has set a “gov­ern­ing tem­pera­ment that is ar­rog­ant, pa­ter­nal­ist­ic, and con­des­cend­ing.

“That deep sense of anxi­ety in the coun­try is what is fuel­ing all of this, and that tells me we owe people the right to de­cide if they want to stay on this path or not,” he said. “And the only way you can do that is if you of­fer an­oth­er path—and not just some vague plat­it­udes, not just get some poll­ster to tell you what to say, but an ac­tu­al path.”

But that can­not wait un­til a nom­in­ee is chosen. Ry­an said he and Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy will hunker down with the con­fer­ence over the break and in­to Janu­ary to draft a gov­ern­ing vis­ion. Wheth­er that will be bound in con­tract or pledge form re­mains to be seen. But some of the ten­ets are emer­ging. He wants to move on two tracks, both work­ing with Demo­crats on areas where they can find com­mon ground—for in­stance, on crim­in­al-justice re­form and the ap­pro­pri­ations pro­cess—and also stak­ing out con­trast by passing solely GOP le­gis­la­tion, such as a re­peal of Obama­care.

Ry­an said the House will vote on a re­con­cili­ation pack­age in Janu­ary that re­verses Obama­care and cuts off fed­er­al fund­ing to Planned Par­ent­hood, and the House will craft and vote on an al­tern­at­ive to the pres­id­ent’s health law. He is cog­niz­ant, in the mean­time, of Boehner’s warn­ing not to over­prom­ise to the elect­or­ate.

“I’m not go­ing to say it’s go­ing in­to law. … But are we go­ing to pro­pose something? You bet we are,” he said. “We will make com­mit­ments on things that are with­in our con­trol. Mak­ing a pro­pos­al is with­in our con­trol. Don’t sug­gest that we’re go­ing to say that pro­pos­al is go­ing in­to law in 2016—with a pres­id­ent named Obama—[and that] we’re go­ing to re­peal something like Obama­care. That’s not what’s be­ing prom­ised and com­mit­ted to.”

He said the House could also take up an au­thor­iz­a­tion for the use of mil­it­ary force to tar­get ji­hadist ter­ror­ists in the Middle East, and Mc­Carthy and For­eign Af­fairs Com­mit­tee Chair­man Ed Royce will start listen­ing ses­sions on the top­ic in Janu­ary. But he knows his con­fer­ence would not pass any­thing that in any way lim­its this pres­id­ent or the next from mil­it­ary en­gage­ment with the Is­lam­ic State.

“I think it would be a good sym­bol of Amer­ic­an re­solve to have a new AUMF to go after IS­IS, to thor­oughly de­feat and des­troy IS­IS. Not to con­tain—to des­troy IS­IS. But we will not pass an AUMF that is de­signed to tie the hands of the next pres­id­ent,” he said.

And in gen­er­al, he said, he wants to al­low more votes, and not just ones that are pre-san­it­ized for con­sump­tion dur­ing an elec­tion year, but ones that al­low both Demo­crats and Re­pub­lic­ans to pro­pose real policies.

“There’s a plus side and a down­side of reg­u­lar or­der and open­ing up the pro­cess. People have got to take votes, and that’s just the way the cook­ie crumbles,” Ry­an said. “I came here with a D+3 dis­trict and then it be­came an R+0 dis­trict. … So I’m no stranger to tak­ing tough votes and ex­plain­ing it in dif­fi­cult polit­ic­al situ­ations. It clearly can be done, so you’ve just got to lean in­to it and do it.

“What this place al­ways used to do is try to pre­de­ter­mine everything, down to the amend­ment. I don’t think that the speak­er’s of­fice should have that kind of power,” he ad­ded.

Still, there are some things he said he simply will not do, for vari­ous reas­ons. Com­pre­hens­ive tax re­form is out of the ques­tion for 2016, he said, be­cause the gulf of ideas between his party and the pres­id­ent’s is too wide. Ry­an is an avid deer hunter (he star­ted grow­ing his new beard in a deer blind, and he makes ven­ison saus­age and jerky in his free time), and gun-con­trol le­gis­la­tion to re­spond to the coun­try’s spate of mass shoot­ings is out of the ques­tion. "What we should fo­cus on is crim­in­als, ter­ror­ists, men­tal-health re­form, and we should not be dis­trac­ted with ideas that take away the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of law-abid­ing cit­izens,” he said.

Not all of this will work, he con­ceded. As he said in his speech ac­cept­ing the speak­er­ship, he ex­pects bills to fail and con­siders that a healthy part of the le­gis­lat­ive pro­cess. The Left and the Right will take aim at him. But he said he will re­main the happy war­ri­or throughout. “I’m sure there are go­ing to be web­sites and voices out there that will al­ways be con­trari­an, no mat­ter who is in charge and no mat­ter what we are do­ing. That’s to be ex­pec­ted,” he said. “But the core of the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment is yearn­ing to be uni­fied around a bold, con­ser­vat­ive, spe­cif­ic agenda, and that’s what we are go­ing to do.”

[Pietro]

I'm sure he is happy, after all the whole point of the modern republican party is to fill their campaign chests w/ gold.

Certainly this budget makes all the millionaires and billionaires delighted. And when billionaires are happy the political class is happy.

[Vision]

Because he's decided to ride the gravy train.

[ripley]

Question:

Why the beard?

(All of a sudden he’s a brilliant genius now because the Progressives love him?)

Just asking.

(That congress must be one he%% of a disgusting place to work with all those Progressives around. It’s bad enough to be around normal people with all their foibles, but Progressives are a psychiatric breed with cosmic abrasiveness as a norm.)

IMHO

[rbg81]

Reluctant? Yeah, sure. Like Senator Palpatine was “reluctant” to become Chancellor.