In agreeing to the deal, Speaker John Boehner, who departs his post on Friday, gives his successor, Paul Ryan, a parting gift: the right to do nothing.
Marco Rubio’s Ambition, and Sharp Elbows, Fueled His Rise in Tallahassee
And he appeared willing, his detractors said, to abandon the interests of his district if the end result was a political promotion for himself. His election to speaker was made possible, in part, because of a bargain he had made: In exchange for votes from northern Florida lawmakers, former legislators and aides said, he agreed not to fight a measure that increased money for school spending in less-populated, rural regions of the state and reduced it in denser, high-cost areas like Miami.
“He saw his path to be speaker and it came at the expense of his constituents, literally,” said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic strategist who worked as a legislative aide at the time.
.. And at a time when Republican presidential politics are being dominated by candidates who are outsiders to the political system, Mr. Rubio, with his ability to navigate intraparty politics and win over powerful benefactors, has proved himself to be a master of the inside game.
Freedom Caucus Is Key to Paul Ryan House Speaker Decision
In the meeting on Tuesday evening, Mr. Ryan demanded a change that would deprive rebel lawmakers of their most powerful weapon: the ability to make a motion “to vacate the chair” and essentially kick the speaker out of the job.
“As part of those rules changes, he believes there needs to be a change to the process for a motion to vacate the chair,” a spokesman for Mr. Ryan wrote in a briefing paper for reporters. “No matter who is speaker, they cannot be successful with this weapon pointed at them all the time.”
Hillary’s Opportunish
All presidential candidates face a core problem. To win their party’s nomination in an age of growing polarization they have to adopt base-pleasing, pseudo-extreme policy positions. But to win a general election and actually govern they have to adopt semi-centrist majority positions.
How can one person do both?
Nobody had figured this out until, brilliantly, Hillary Clinton. She is campaigning on a series of positions that she transparently does not believe in. She’ll say what she needs to say now to become Bernie Sanders in a pantsuit (wait, Bernie Sanders already wears a pantsuit!). Then, nomination in hand and White House won, she will, it appears, transparently flip back and embrace whatever other positions she doesn’t believe in that will help her succeed in her new role.
.. Her most impressive elision concerns trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. When she announced her opposition to Judy Woodruff on the “PBS NewsHour” she was performing a flip-flop of the sort that leaves gymnasts gaping and applauding. As CNN pointed out, she’s praised the deal 45 separate times, at one point calling it “the gold standard in trade agreements.”
.. This deftness could, if used wisely, help Clinton placate the left in order to get the nomination and then placate the powerful in order, as president, to pass legislation. By contrast, if a conviction politician like Sanders or Ben Carson got elected, he wouldn’t be able to get 35 votes for anything he proposed.
.. As the old wisdom goes, the problem with pragmatism is that it doesn’t work.
.. If Clinton’s flip-flop ends up sinking the deal, she will have helped sentence millions of people to further poverty and destabilized the world’s most dynamic region.