Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the speaker of the House, de facto ideological leader of the Republican Party, and third-most powerful man in all of America, held his head in his hands at the back of the House chamber and waited helplessly for members of his own conference to sabotage their own legislation.
No Democrats voted yes. Thirty Republicans voted no. And the Farm Bill just failed 198-213. An informative disaster, it lays bare many of the divisions that have been flaring up behind the closed GOP conference doors.
It should be clear by now that the debate is not over the substance of the Farm Bill. That legislation isn’t something for limited government types to write home about, but it does include a few conservative wins. If the bill had passed, for instance, it would have implemented stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults on food stamps — a major victory for both President Trump and Ryan. But conservatives wanted something else.
The conservative Freedom Caucus held the Farm Bill hostage in order to force GOP leadership to vote on separate controversial immigration legislation sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. They demanded a vote on immigration before turning their attention to agriculture. They didn’t get one, and so they pulled the trigger.
Both sides will bicker over whether this is a self-inflicted wound or another three-dimensional chess move. The real question is about actual sides, a question Ryan might’ve pondered as the Farm Bill burned.
“We basically run a coalition government without the efficiency of a parliamentary system,” Ryan told Politico’s Tim Alberta last December. It is difficult to disagree with that now.
While Democrats march with rank-and-file unity on the House floor, it’s not even clear how many banners there are inside the Republican party. The three big ones include the moderate Tuesday Group, the inversely conservative Freedom Caucus, and members still loyal to leadership. A better political scientist could go deeper and diagnose further, but the main point is division.
This division deadlocked Congress first on Obamacare repeal and now on the Farm Bill, led to the scalping of former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and caused Ryan to get out while he could.
This doesn’t mean that what was running through Ryan’s head wasn’t pleasant. Watching his party turn on him again, he might have comforted himself with thoughts of retirement. Ryan will return home to Wisconsin in a couple months and leave behind this inefficient parliament.
