Overcoming deep personal ambivalence and a battery of attacks from conservative complainers outside Congress, Paul Ryan became the 54th speaker of the House on October 29, 2015. To call this improbable understates the case. Not primarily because Ryan is young (he’s 45) or because Ryan is first a policy maven (his colleagues used to worry that he was too wonky to be an effective communicator) or because Ryan is an inveterate optimist in an age of pessimism (though his sanguinity is irrepressible).
The fact that Ryan is today the most important Republican in Washington—the de facto leader of the new GOP establishment—is surprising for another reason. Ryan rose after years as a leading anti-establishment agitator on one of the most important domestic policy issues of our time.
In January 2007, the national debt was roughly $9 trillion. Long-term projections had it growing exponentially and inexorably, driven by entitlements. Ryan, frustrated by the inability to get things done in Congress, considered leaving when Democrats took the House in November 2006. He did not. But liberated by his willingness to walk away, Ryan cast aside the long-held, nearly unanimous view that entitlements were the “third rail” of American politics and crafted a plan to reform them. When he presented an early version to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, his proposal was met with skepticism and disbelief. One member who attended the briefing said many of his colleagues were “running for cover.”
Ryan moved forward anyway. On May 21, 2008, without warning the leaders of his own party, Ryan introduced the legislative version of his plan: A Roadmap for America’s Future. “When I wrote this, I didn’t ask the leadership for permission,” Ryan told us in 2012. “I figured, ask forgiveness later and not permission first.”
The bill had eight original cosponsors and was largely ignored, at least initially. But in private, Washington Republicans lined up to urge Ryan to shelve his program. He declined. In January 2010, on the same day Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union address, Ryan published a long op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, touting his reforms as an alternative to the president’s statist policies. “It is based on a fundamentally different vision from the one now prevailing in Washington. It focuses the government on its proper role. It restrains government spending, and hence limits the size of government itself.”
Democrats howled in opposition. So did the Republican establishment. GOP donors lit up phone lines on Capitol Hill urging Minority Leader John Boehner to put Ryan back in his box. “Parts of it are well done,” said Boehner, before undercutting Ryan’s effort. “Other parts I have some doubts about, in terms of how good the policy is.” The Republican party infrastructure warned its members about even mentioning Ryan’s reforms. In August 2010, a press secretary for the NRCC sent out an “Alert” to GOP campaigns across the country:
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) offered the same advice, telling candidates to avoid discussing entitlements at all costs. Republican consultants who met regularly to discuss how to defeat Democrats were instead spending much of their time plotting against Ryan and his Roadmap. Republicans on K Street protested.
But across the country, grassroots conservatives embraced the reforms, and many candidates chose to run on them. (Ryan’s office received more than 100 requests for briefings during the 2010 cycle.)
“I think the validation of the 2010 elections gave leadership the courage to proceed—2010 woke people up,” Ryan said. “The 87 new freshman were a welcome burst of energy, and I think leadership understood that they had two choices: They could lead the parade, or they could get out of the way.”
In January 2011, Ryan gave the GOP response to Obama’s State of the Union, highlighting his vision of conservative governance. By spring, Republicans in both chambers of Congress had voted for Ryan’s budget, and his reforms had become official Republican policy. And in 2012, of course, he was chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate.
In short order, then, the antiestablishment agitator became a leading party spokesman, and his reforms were the official party line. Ryan didn’t do the bidding of the Republican establishment. He fought the establishment and won. And eventually the establishment was doing his bidding—on the critical domestic policy concern of our time.
Now conservatives—in Congress and outside—have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a strong governing majority based on the limited government principles that stirred the Founders and have animated Republicans for more than a century. There will be policy and strategic and tactical differences, big and small. But with bold, thoughtful leadership, such differences can be a source of strength for an ideological movement or a political party.
We trust Speaker Paul Ryan will provide that leadership.
