Randy Bryce’s Republican opponent whacked him this week for peddling far-left policies in their southern Wisconsin district — the same district that retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan has represented for two decades.
Though Bryce, also known as the “Iron Stache,” has managed to impress coastal progressives, he has a high hill to climb on a platform that calls for policies like abolishing ICE and “Medicare for All” when it comes to winning over voters in his own backyard. And Bryan Steil knows it.
In an appearance on Rep. Sean Duffy’s, R-Wis., podcast this week, obtained first by the Washington Examiner, Steil asserted that Bryce has “taken the playbook from Bernie Sanders,” who has endorsed his bid for Ryan’s seat.
The 37-year-old attorney called abolishing ICE a “terrible idea” and “dangerous” policy. On Bryce’s support for “Medicare for all,” Steil noted, “I don’t talk to almost anybody that says, ‘I want more government in my life,’ that that’s what we need.”
“He’s offering false choices and then not explaining even how you would pay for that,” the first-time candidate argued.
As Steil sees it, Bryce’s platform is self-defeating. “He is far-left, die-hard progressive, and so, fair enough— but the contrast, then, of ideas couldn’t be more clear. And so it allows, really, an opportunity to have a campaign talking about ideas. And when you do that, we’ll prevail,” Steil contended.
Duffy asked Steil to name the “craziest socialist policy [Bryce] espouses.” When it comes to the Iron Stache, Steil said, “you get the whole buffet of Bernie Sanders ideas.”
You can read more about Ryan’s district here, but he’s secured re-election by wide margins for nearly 20 years. President Trump won it by 10 points in 2016. The district isn’t exactly deep red— voters also preferred Barack Obama by a slim 51-48 point margin in 2008— but it’s probably not quite ready for the Iron Stache either.
