Republican officials in Congress and the White House are now openly discussing finding a GOP replacement to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as Speaker of the House, after Ryan failed to pass the American Health Care Act out of the House and misled the public and President Donald Trump when he promised repeatedly the bill would pass.
Ryan was caught on an audio file from October—obtained by Breitbart News and published a couple weeks ago—saying he is “not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future.” While the audio file does not make the comments clear, Ryan’s staff later claimed that it was specifically about the Access Hollywood tape scandal from the election. The audio tape of Ryan, recorded from a House GOP members’ conference call, does not make that context clear.
.. the president is concerned that Ryan may not have his—or his agenda’s—best interests at heart. Ryan’s failure to deliver the votes on healthcare cement Trump’s skepticism of Ryan, they say... After the election in November, it was widely reported that there were enough Republican votes to remove Ryan as Speaker—and the only reason conservatives kept him is that Trump won the election and embraced Ryan. But now Trump may perceive Ryan as a burden rather than someone who can help enact his agenda.. It has gotten so far along in the process that alternative names are being thrown around—anyone from House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), to former Freedom Caucus chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ)—to Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Peter Roskam (R-IL), according to one senior House GOP aide... The fact that Frelinghuysen—a committee chairman of the powerful House panel that oversees the disbursement of government cash–came out publicly against the legislation is proof that Ryan has problems inside the House GOP conference that go much deeper than the House Freedom Caucus. It is worth noting that Frelinghuysen is a direct descendant of America’s founding fathers, and his family has served in Congress in every generation since the 1700s... There are ongoing discussions in House offices conference-wide whether Republicans should use the same tactic that conservatives used in 2015 to remove now-former Speaker John Boehner from the House. Back then, Meadows—then just a member of the House Freedom Caucus—introduced what is called a resolution with a motion to vacate the chair... Asked explicitly whether President Trump has confidence in Ryan remaining as Speaker, White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not answer Breitbart News, yes or no.
The Scammers, the Scammed and America’s Fate
all of these proposals share a family resemblance: Like his health plan, each involved savage cuts in benefits for the poor and working class, with the money released by these cuts used to offset large tax cuts for the rich. All were, however, sold on false pretenses as plans for deficit reduction.
Worse, the alleged deficit reduction came entirely from “magic asterisks”: claims about huge savings to be achieved by cutting unspecified government spending, huge revenue increases to be achieved by closing unspecified tax loopholes. It was a con job all the way.
So how did Mr. Ryan reach a position where his actions may reshape the lives of so many of his fellow citizens, in most cases very much for the worse? The answer lies in the impenetrable gullibility of his base. No, not his constituents: the news media, who made him what he is.
You see, until very recently both news coverage and political punditry were dominated by the convention of “balance.”
.. There’s an important lesson here, and it’s not just about health care or Mr. Ryan; it’s about the destructive effects of false symmetry in reporting at a time of vast asymmetry in reality.
Ryan’s Leadership Is Tested by GOP’s Civil War on Health Bill
The test for Mr. Ryan is whether he can make the leap from serving as the architect of conservative policy, a role he played for years as the party’s leading budget author, to the more difficult role of guiding legislation into law. The task is much tougher now than when Republicans passed bills with the knowledge that a Democratic president would veto them.
.. GOP lawmakers say that Mr. Ryan’s style of building support relies more on PowerPoint presentations than more muscular forms of persuasion. “It’s not Paul Ryan’s style to ‘hot box’ people,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), one of Mr. Ryan’s allies. “In some previous regimes, there was a lot of arm twisting. With Paul Ryan, you get a lot of persuading and listening.”
.. If his powers of persuasion come up short, it will be Mr. Ryan’s most high-profile stumble as speaker and a sign that the fractious House GOP conference is beyond his control.
.. He has sought their input more often and at earlier stages of developing legislation, and he has allowed conservatives to hold more seats in the higher echelons of House GOP leadership meetings. He publicly defers to committees and frequently appears on television to give vulnerable Republicans cover on the toughest bills.
.. “If you get 85% of what you want, that’s pretty darn good,” he said.
The Politics of the AHCA
This is the party, after all, that just a few months ago lost the presidency to the most unsuitable, unfit, unappealing major-party candidate in American history, and has spent most of the time since then blaming Russia for its own ineptitude.
.. Neoliberal, managerial, centrist globalism is being challenged by populists of the anti-liberal right and left. Right now, the right-wing variant holds power in Washington. If Trump had the guts to combine his populist-nationalist appeals with support for a single-payer health-care system, he just might succeed in realigning both major American parties by scrambling their policy commitments.
.. Maybe he’s gambling that for the bulk of his voters, making sure they aren’t paying for insurance for the “undeserving” is precisely the point.
.. Meanwhile, by 2020 the state of the economy and job growth is what will really matter to voters, or at least an electoral college majority thereof.
.. It would normally be strange for a Republican president to want his own party’s majority to suffer a major black eye like that. But this is Ryan’s bill, and Trump has no love for Ryan.
.. Moreover, inasmuch as Bannon is in competition with Ryan-ally and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for influence over the White House’s agenda, it’s very much in his interest specifically for Ryan to fail. The collapse of the AHCA would be a massive failure — and would likely invite a leadership challenge.
.. And if it failed quickly, it would be easy for Trump to blame Ryan for getting it wrong, tinker with ObamaCare around the edges (particularly in ways that could be done without even passing legislation), and then when the exchanges don’t collapse claim he fixed them.
.. Trump could yell at a bunch of insurance executives, watch premiums stabilize, and claim victory.
.. The most exotic possibility is that Trump not only wants the bill to fail and Ryan to take the blame, but that he wouldn’t be too upset to see the Freedom Caucus defanged
.. There are certainly people in Trump’s inner circle who see the big problem with ObamaCare as being its support of private insurers, and who would prefer a relatively stingy single-payer plan to either ObamaCare or ObamaCare light. Trump doesn’t have a legislative majority for a reform like that — but maybe after some strategic losses in 2018 he would?
.. it is important to recognize that Trump’s position is far less exposed than Ryan’s is.
.. the dominant political fact about the Trump presidency. He won by attacking his own party’s leadership. He can’t win again without retaining the support of the Republican base — which means he has to be supportive of any effort to repeal ObamaCare, because the base has demanded that for years. But he will take every opportunity to convince that same base that they should be more loyal to him than to a GOP leadership for which they have already demonstrated mistrust. Which means failures by that leadership can be turned to his advantage.