Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who served as speaker in one of the most topsy-turvy periods of Republican Party history, announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of this Congress.
Having taken over almost against his will, following an unprecedented coup that he opposed against his predecessor, Ryan found himself governing alongside a president who had won the GOP nomination after running largely against him and the party leadership in Congress.
But as far as the job of House Speaker is concerned, the most significant changes happened before Ryan took the gavel, and they had more to do with the Tea Party than with President Trump. These massive changes to the way congressional appropriations and campaign finance work in Washington destroyed the model by which the congressional Republican Party had been run before. Speaker John Boehner barely looked for a way to replace it; Ryan looked, but never found one.
Back during the President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush years, congressional majorities were run on the basis that money equals power. Party leaders used earmarks to command the loyalty of the rank and file with taxpayers’ money. If you vote against leadership, then that highway spur or the Congressman John Bull Center for Applied Aquaponics gets built in someone else’s district.
On the other hand, members who played ball with the leadership had constant access to abundant cash from campaign donors — the other coin of the realm — and thus acquired some security at election time. The legal limits that McCain-Feingold had set on the size of political donations helped lobbyists, who could quickly bundle dozens of rich clients together for a quick and lucrative haul.
This K Street machine model fell apart only after the Citizens United v. FEC decision on campaign finance, which allowed outside groups to spend without any input from party leadership. Party leaders lost their monopoly on campaign finance.
The other deathblow to the old model was the earmark ban, which demonstrated among other things that voters don’t care about earmarks. Their absence, however, has left party leaders with less power to cajole reluctant members on key votes.
The loss of both earmarks and their near-monopoly on big-money fundraising meant party leadership needed to find a new way to govern. But they haven’t succeeded yet, and are still looking.
Ryan tried something new when he pushed for Obamacare repeal and tax cuts. He mostly abandoned the committee process and floor amendments, and instead crafted bills behind closed doors. He took input from every member, but it was more a consultative than a collaborative process. That’s why the first Obamacare repeal bill failed; members didn’t feel they had buy-in.
Ryan’s second go-around with healthcare was more collaborative, as was the tax bill — both of which passed the House. But still, Ryan’s guiding principle seemed to be to let the party shape the bill before bringing it out into the public.
Will some variation of this closed-door governance prove to be the right path forward for the next Republican speaker? That seems unlikely. If the tumult of the Tea Party and Trump’s election taught us anything, it’s that the GOP leadership was out of touch with its base voters and their views.
This crucial piece of information, clearly repeated in Republican primaries for the past four election cycles, should inform the next lineup of leaders about how to govern.
The decentralizing changes that brought the GOP to where it is today effectively stripped the insulation from the Washington party, exposing it to its base. And under all that insulation was something very unlike what they had expected.
Speaker Ryan is a good, earnest, and temperate man, but he is not a man of the Republican base as it is now composed. He is a man of the conservative movement. For that reason, we have generally agreed with him and cheered his goals, even while occasionally objecting on details and tactics.
It may be that a Republican among those now on Capitol Hill can figure out how to govern today’s congressional party. But it’s an intensely difficult task. Ryan is smart and principled, and he represented that element in the party. But it is not the only element. Other segments honor conservative principles as often in the breach as in their observance. So does the president, with whom the next leaders will have to work. Ryan’s shoes will be difficult to fill.
