Republicans have a shot at running Capitol Hill unencumbered for the next decade. They just need to ensure that nothing changes in the ranks of Democrat leadership across the aisle. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, wants to upend that leadership.
The rustbelt insurgent from Ohio threatens both Republican reforms and the leadership of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. He’s the only House Democrat taking a real risk to confront objective electoral reality.
For a dozen years, Pelosi has led Democrats into each congressional battle, rallying her conference to the banner of progressive politics. So long as she leads, Andrew Jackson’s party will pursue the priorities of coastal liberal elites. For Republicans, it’s mostly been a godsend.
Unprecedented legislative victories under Pelosi were an unmitigated disaster for Democrats. With Obamacare, she helped transform the American healthcare system, succeeding where progressives from FDR to Hillary Clinton had failed. After that she muscled through Dodd-Frank, the biggest banking regulation since the Great Depression.
She lost her majority when, instead of embracing those reforms, the electorate rejected Democrats at the ballot box. Victims of Pelosi’s success, her party has experienced attrition unknown in recent history. In fact, they haven’t had it this bad since Calvin Coolidge was in the White House.
Begging his colleagues to join in his coup attempt, Ryan pointed to those dismal numbers Monday. “The question really is, how bad does it have to get?” Ryan asked, after complaining how his party lost its blue-collar roots. “We lost 68 seats since 2010, we have the lowest number in our caucus since 1929.” But Democrats might have hit rock bottom already.
Republicans have raided governors’ mansions across the country, destroyed Democrat majorities in both chambers, and finally seized the White House after an eight-year absence. The sphere of Democrat influence doesn’t surpass the municipal level. When Obama exits Washington, Democrats will look to their congressional leaders to reverse that spiral. They could look to Ryan.
A Midwestern moderate, Ryan contrasts sharply with the California liberalism of Pelosi. He opposes unhampered free trade, supports the 2nd Amendment, and until recently was pro-life on abortion, although he changed his stance. Most importantly, he’s from Youngstown, one of the poorest post-industrial cities in Ohio, and precisely the sort of place where Donald Trump overperformed the typical Republican. In short, he looks and sounds a lot more like middle America than leaders who hail from New York City and San Francisco.
A Democrat minority under Ryan could at least try to win back the blue-collar voters that Republicans took away under Trump’s banner. By focusing on the economy, they’d have a real shot at hampering the GOP’s Better Way agenda. Stuck in her ways, an aging Pelosi would just push the same ideology her party peddled for the last dozen years.
Still, it’s a long way to the top for the insurgent. On Sunday, Pelosi bragged that she enjoys that support of two-thirds of her caucus. Ryan only has one public endorsement, Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., who is probably counting on the fact that Pelosi won’t be around forever.
Republicans, meanwhile, will hope against an upset victory.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
