Ever since Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was floated as a potential candidate to succeed Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as speaker of the House, it’s had a polarizing effect on the Right.
The prospect of Speaker Ryan has pitted those who portray him as some sort of enemy against conservatism against those who try to defend him as an unimpeachable conservative icon.
In reality, neither of these views capture who Ryan is. In the many interviews I’ve conducted with Ryan over the years, what’s been clear is that he is philosophically conservative and passionate about trying to translate abstract limited government principles into tangible policy solutions.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2574118/
But at the same time, he’s proved a willingness to be a loyal soldier and go along with the party, which at times has forced him to compromise on conservative ideas.
Ryan backed Social Security reform both before and after it was cool. He ran on reform in his first race for Congress in 1998, despite being in a swing congressional district. And he was still pushing for Social Security personal accounts well after President Bush’s 2005 effort went down in flames and even many proponents gave up in the wake of the 2008 financial markets crash.
Yet Ryan also went along with many of Bush’s decisions that inflamed limited government conservatives, such as his support for the Medicare prescription drug plan and Wall Street bailout.
Speaking to Ryan in 2010, I pressed him on why he cast such votes even though they contradict limited government principles — and his answers provide a window into how he might approach making his case to reluctant conservatives on tough votes in the job of speaker.
“You don’t get to take the vote you want in Congress,” Ryan lamented to me. “Sometimes you have to take votes that you don’t want to take, but they’re the best of the two choices.”
Bush, he said, notified him that if the House version of the Medicare drug bill didn’t pass, the administration would have pushed the Senate bill, which did not include free market provisions such as health savings accounts. “That was the choice he gave us,” he says. “It was not a choice I liked.”
Had the Wall Street bailout not passed, he said he feared that a resulting economic collapse would have paved the way for another New Deal.
Based purely on this, it would be easy to portray him as just another Republican who came to Washington and got corrupted. Voting for the massive Wall Street bailout and for the largest expansion of entitlements since the Great Society is difficult to swallow from a limited government perspective. But defining him merely by such votes wouldn’t be completely fair either.
After President Obama took office, when many Republicans were opposing Obama and his agenda in a mindless way, Ryan was able to able to make detailed, fact-based critiques of the administration’s policies, calmly but devastatingly annihilating Obama’s deficit skullduggery and dubious healthcare claims.
Heading into 2010, it would have been possible for Ryan take the easy path, as Republicans typically do, making vague statements about slashing government spending without offering any specifics.
Instead, Ryan offered an updated version of his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a sweeping plan to overhaul the nation’s entitlements, reform the healthcare system and transform the tax code. Once Republicans took over the House and Ryan rose to chair the Budget Committee, he used this perch and his credibility with the usually timid leadership to convince the GOP to adopt a version of the proposal as their formal budget. Though, he did have to compromise and cut corners on several aspects of his proposal to ensure broader adoption.
When I spoke to Ryan ahead of the 2014 election, he chastised the “play it safe” attitude of Republicans who smelled victory and instead pushed for Republicans to offer bold ideas. “This idea of running as a referendum, assuming a wave, assuming you’ve got the wind at your back, assuming with an unpopular president we therefore by default will win, I don’t buy that,” Ryan told me. “I think you’ve got to give people a reason to vote for you.”
A number of conservatives who hailed Ryan in 2011 and touted him as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick in 2012 have slammed the idea of him being speaker, noting his supposed betrayal on immigration in 2013. Whatever else can be said of Ryan, however, his views on immigration were no secret before then — as he was one of the few members, back in 2005, to co-sponsor the House version of the controversial McCain-Kennedy immigration bill.
The reluctant decision to run as speaker was classic Ryan — calls for more pragmatism and party unity coupled with a promise of a “a bold agenda that will tackle the country’s problems head on.”
Throughout his career, Ryan has tried to paint the corners, pushing policies that challenge the boundaries of the politically feasible while trying to work within the system. As speaker, his biggest test will be to get a critical mass of his fellow Republicans to embrace a similar approach to advancing the conservative agenda.
