Some members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus met privately on Wednesday to discuss agitating for more clout, which could take the form of a challenge to Mr. Ryan, or a call for rules changes that the speaker is likely to oppose.
.. Nonpartisan analysts are forecasting that Democrats will pick up five to 20 seats next week, well shy of the 30 needed to retake control.
.. They also have been weighing rules changes they would like to see — within the party and for the House as a whole — largely intended to empower members with responsibilities typically reserved for leadership, including the selection of committee chairpersons.
.. Members of the caucus are also concerned about a push from more moderate Republicans to toss out the so-called motion to vacate the chair, a procedural move through which a single member can force a vote to remove the speaker. One member of the Freedom Caucus, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, tried to use it to oust John A. Boehner from his speakership last year, prompting many — including Mr. Ryan — to criticize it.
.. Their latest discussions — and the fact that a narrower Republican majority would mean Mr. Ryan could afford to lose fewer votes to retain his speakership — have raised the prospect that the group could resort to political hostage-taking to fulfill their demands.
Why This Election Terrifies Me
Last weekend a man who was getting a head start on Halloween attended a University of Wisconsin football game in a costume that depicted Barack Obama with a noose around his neck.
.. He has modeled contempt for civilized norms and even the rule of law, endorsing violence against protesters, expressing admiration for a Russian autocrat, pledging a clampdown on the press, suggesting that Second Amendment enthusiasts might want to take a shot at Clinton, and promising to throw her in jail.
.. But I can’t identify a single issue like that, domestic or foreign, in 2016, because no campaign in my adult lifetime has turned so little on policy and so much on character.
.. it feels as if we’re coming out of this election with four parties:
- the Paul Ryan Republicans,
- the Freedom Caucus,
- the establishment Democrats and
- the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders brigade,
which is raring to use the muscle that Sanders flexed during the primaries for legislation more progressive than anything that the House would ever approve.
.. Trump prophesies a “constitutional crisis.” Republicans raise the specters of “impeachment” and “indictment.” And Rudy Giuliani demands an assurance from Obama that he won’t pardon Clinton, who is favored to win even though only 47 percent of the people who are planning to vote for her can muster any considerable enthusiasm about it.
Can the U.S. Win This Election?
For starters, this version of the Republican Party has to die. I don’t say that as a partisan. I say that as a citizen who believes that America needs a healthy center-right party that offers more market-based solutions to problems; keeps the pressure on for deregulation, freer trade and smaller government; and is willing to compromise. But today’s version of the G.O.P. is not such a problem-solving party.
We have known that ever since the G.O.P. speaker of the House John Boehner quit, not because he couldn’t work with President Obama but because roughly a quarter of House Republicans, the so-called Freedom Caucus, were simply not interested in governing and had made his job impossible.
Hillary Clinton’s Poisoned Prize
Trump isn’t going anywhere, nor are his provocations. It was the birther conspiracy yesterday; it will be something else tomorrow. And Clinton isn’t trading war for peace. Her presidency, should it indeed happen, will be a battle royal. The circumstances surrounding it are as politically daunting and inhospitable to accomplishment as those facing any of her predecessors over the last half-century.
.. And nearly all of the seats that Republicans are projected to lose, he said, are those of relatively moderate lawmakers. It’s not the hyper-conservative members of the Freedom Caucus who are on the run. They’re from safely Republican districts. They’re fine. They’ll be back — and, proportionally, they’ll be a bigger, more forceful presence among the Republicans remaining in the House.
.. “What’s often missed about the Freedom Caucus is that the majority is less of a priority for them than having a pure ideology.”
.. Already, some House conservatives have called for hearings about Clinton’s emails after any Clinton inauguration; one of them has already raised the specter of impeachment. At this stage, it’s in the very DNA of the relationship between Clintons and Republicans for there to be dire threats, special investigations, public grilling. It’s a reflex, a tic. Not even a landslide on Nov. 8 would change that.
.. Many of the votes she gets on Nov. 8 will come from people more committed to suppressing Trump than to elevating her
.. the percentage of voters who viewed her unfavorably (54 percent) was still 12 points higher than the percentage who viewed her favorably (42 percent).
That spread was 15 points in a CNN poll over the same period. No president in modern history has taken office after such sustained unpopularity in the run-up to the election.
.. And no president in my lifetime has confronted what Clinton surely will: an opponent who is vanquished but not remotely humbled.