If you believe the Republican leader is only interested in maintaining his republican majority, and thus his power, then you know that you can motivate him by helping or hurting his most at risk members. Losing his speaker-ship by a member vote is also, of course, a pressure point.
“If you believe the Republican leader is only interested in maintaining his republican majority,...”
... then you have an incredibly naive and limited outlook on what actually goes on in DC.
Washington DC is a bribery and embezzlement ring, and little else. All of us who have been there to see it operate firsthand know this to be true beyond any reasonable doubt.
Ryan, like almost all the others, works for his donors and not his constituents, and this industry-authored bill that threatens to shatter the GOP majority coalition is solid evidence thereof, and in direct contradiction to any pretense of more noble or widely shared objectives.