The speaker’s exit highlights the scale of the GOP’s transformation.
With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve.
THE BIG IDEA:
In an alternative universe, Paul Ryan is vice president. It’s his sixth year in the White House, and he is the presumptive Republican nominee to succeed Mitt Romney in 2020.
In another intriguing counterfactual, Eric Cantor is speaker of the House and Ryan is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Romney’s struggles to secure the GOP nomination in 2012 over a historically weak field of has-beens and Cantor’s unexpected downfall in a 2014 primary both offered early warning signs of the potent forces that would propel Donald Trump to the presidency.
Ryan, who not long ago was considered both the GOP’s ideological standard-bearer and its future, has become a stranger of sorts in his own party. He’s struggled to adjust. Now, at just 48, he’s stepping aside.
He said last night that he does not plan to ever seek public office again, though he expressed openness to becoming ambassador to Ireland in a decade or so. “That’s what speaker of the House gets you,” Ryan told Paul Kane and other reporters in his office . “That’s kind of why I knew this would be my last elected office. When I took this job, I knew that.”
Laura Ingraham celebrated Ryan’s exit on her Fox show last night, calling it proof that the “GOP establishment” is “out of steam” and finally yielding to Trump.
What’s wild about that statement is Ryan was not really seen as part of the “establishment” until somewhat recently. Romney picked him as his running mate over Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), an avatar of the establishment, because he needed to shore up the conservative base and Ryan was seen as having grass-roots appeal.
Ryan was sometimes seen as a nuisance by GOP leadership during this time. Party strategists eyed his annual budget proposals as unhelpful because they called for steep cuts that would never come to pass, including changes to entitlement programs, but gave fodder for Democratic attack ads.
In 2015, when John Boehner stepped down after years of growing tension with his right flank, Ryan emerged to take the job because he was perceived as a bridge between the various factions of the party.
— Trump changed everything, and Trumpism is an unapologetic repudiation of nearly everything Ryan once stood for. Overhauling entitlements and pursuing austerity in government animated Ryan; Trump ran against any changes to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. Ryan was always an outspoken free trader and believer in the power of markets; Trump is a protectionist who has pursued tariffs and started a trade war. Ryan has supported comprehensive immigration reform and making the Republican Party more inclusive. He’s an internationalist who supports global engagement. The speaker fashioned himself as a policy wonk and a nitty-gritty numbers guy. Trump is anything but.
Trump in many ways is the opposite of Jack Kemp, Ryan’s mentor and onetime boss who died of cancer in 2009. Kemp, also a former vice presidential nominee, was an early advocate of what would later be called “compassionate conservatism” and focused on helping the poor as George H. W. Bush’s housing secretary. After Bush lost, Kemp started a group called Empower America. Ryan, then 23, was hired as a researcher and speechwriter.
Ryan used to call himself “a Jack Kemp Republican.” “Donald Trump is a Donald Trump Republican,” he said in 2016, during a phase when he wasn’t supporting Trump. “This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. What a lot of Republicans want to see is that we have a standard bearer that bears our standards.”
The standards changed.
“Speaker Ryan is an embodiment of a particular kind of optimistic, pro-growth, pro-free market inclusive conservatism, and that is a very different feel and tone of where the party is going under President Trump,” Michael Steel, a former senior aide to Boehner who worked for Ryan on the 2012 Romney campaign, told Michael Scherer .
— Stop mistaking Trumpism for conservatism. Most of the press coverage in the past 24 hours says matter-of-factly that the party has moved to the right. That’s not quite correct. The party has moved toward Trump, who has redefined modern conservatism in his more nationalistic mold and made what was historically a movement of ideas into, mostly, a cult of personality. “Ryan’s retirement means America no longer has a conservative party,” observes The Post’s Editorial Board . “Republicans are decreasingly conservative and increasingly reactionary.”
The conventional wisdom when Trump took office was that Ryan would be in the driver’s seat on policymaking because the new president didn’t have many core convictions. While the speaker has played a hugely consequential role at shaping what the tax overhaul looked like, for example, the chattering class underestimated Trump’s penchant for disruption and domination.
In a sign of the power dynamic, Ryan repeatedly praised Trump during the news conference to announce his retirement. “I’m grateful to the president for giving us this opportunity to do big things to get this country on the right track,” he said.
— If you had any doubt that it’s Trump’s party now, check out this photo he shared from his session with Republican leaders at the White House last night:
Honored to have Republican Congressional Leadership join me at the @WhiteHouse this evening. Lots to discuss as we continue MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/b9z5Nfdkcl
RYAN’S LEGACY:
— History remembers results, not rhetoric. Ryan may have proposed bold cuts and reforms, but he’ll be remembered for $1.4 trillion in tax cuts, a $1.3 trillion spending bill and $1 trillion annual deficits becoming the new normal. Government spending was at $3.5 trillion when Romney tapped Ryan. Now it’s $4.2 trillion.
— Ryan will also be remembered for empowering Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and failing to protect the “dreamers.” Erica Werner explains: “Ryan has frequently provided political cover… giving Nunes wide latitude to steer the panel through more controversial areas of an investigation that ultimately splintered the once-bipartisan panel.… He defended Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey… He has given no indication that he is at all interested in taking legislative steps to protect the special counsel from being removed…
“Before becoming speaker, he pushed for action on comprehensive immigration reform, even joining outspoken immigration advocate Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) at a joint forum to voice his support. But he became speaker partly by promising not to advance immigration legislation that didn’t enjoy majority support in the GOP conference, and despite much discussion, especially after Trump threatened protections for young undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, nothing ever happened.”
— Karen Tumulty focuses on the moral side of Ryan’s capitulation to Trump: “He was once able to muster the fortitude to call Trump’s attacks on a Mexican American judge ‘the textbook definition of a racist comment.’ When the ‘Access Hollywood’ recording leaked just weeks before the 2016 election … the speaker pronounced himself ‘sickened’ and canceled a campaign event in which the two had been scheduled to appear together. Ryan’s stomach has since grown stronger, or perhaps his standards have grown weaker. Asked in March about reports the president’s lawyer had paid a porn actress to be silent about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump, Ryan said: ‘I haven’t put a second of thought into this. It’s just not on my radar screen.’ Which said a lot about how far Trump has taken Ryan and his party.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan talks as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise listen during a news conference. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
THE LEADERSHIP RACE:
— “ Ryan’s departure would appear to clear the way for lower-ranking GOP leaders, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.), to move up the ladder. But key uncertainties, starting with whether Republicans will be able to maintain their House majority, could keep the race unsettled for months,” Mike DeBonis explains.
McCarthy was the presumptive speaker in 2015 but withdrew in dramatic fashion. This time, though, he has a close relationship with Trump, which is seen for now as giving him a leg up. “Scalise has been struggling with an episode that nearly ended his ascent within the leadership: In 2002, while serving as a state lawmaker, he attended a meeting of a white-supremacist group in Louisiana and faced a firestorm when the episode was publicized in 2014,” DeBonis notes.
— A wild card: “ Ryan wants to serve the rest of his term as speaker. But some senior Republicans are suggesting that Ryan relinquish his gavel now and allow a successor to take over,” Politico’s Rachael Bade and John Bresnahan report. “Several allies to [McCarthy] say House Republicans need to be united heading into the midterms, and that a leadership race could split the conference. Other Republicans are questioning whether having a lame duck speaker at the helm of the Republican Conference will hurt their fundraising. ‘We would have more success if there’s no ambiguity as to what the leadership structure might look like,’ said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), one of McCarthy’s closest allies… Some hard-line conservatives who’ve butted heads with Ryan think a protracted leadership contest would mean a prolonged courtship of them by McCarthy and Scalise — and potentially more influence down the road.… In an ironic twist, the House Freedom Caucus — some members of which have plotted to overthrow Ryan previously — are now saying he should complete his term.”
Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) also announced his retirement yesterday. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
THE EFFECT ON THE MIDTERMS:
— Rep. Dennis A. Ross (R-Fla.) also announced his retirement yesterday. This means at least 46 Republican members of Congress won’t be there next year, and insiders expect a handful more might follow now that Ryan has pulled his parachute.
— Ryan’s exit imperils the GOP’s grip on the House. “As many as 50 House Republican seats are at risk in competitive races this year,” Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns report on the front of the New York Times . “Private polling indicates that Mr. Trump’s approval rating is well below 40 percent in some of those tossup districts, the sort of low political standing that often dooms candidates of the president’s party. ‘This is the nightmare scenario,’ said former congressman Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican. ‘Everybody figured he’d just hang in there till after the election.’
“ Already, some veteran Republicans are suggesting that the party shift its focus from the House to protecting its one-seat Senate majority. ‘It seems clear now that the fight is to hold the Senate,’ said Billy Piper, a lobbyist and former chief of staff to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader. ‘The first thing a Democrat House majority would do is begin impeachment proceedings. The second would be to undo tax reform. A G. O. P. Senate will stop both of those things and continue to put conservatives on the bench at a record pace.’
“ Now, some in the party are suggesting that the speaker’s departure will free Republicans to run a more hard-edged campaign that better reflects the politics of the man in the Oval Office. ‘Paul is relentlessly positive and wanted to run an ideas-oriented campaign,’ said former House speaker Newt Gingrich. ‘But I guarantee you that would not have worked this fall.’”
GO DEEPER:
— WaPo team coverage:
— Opinion pieces:
— How it’s playing elsewhere:
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
— Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) groped, hit and initiated other unwanted sexual conduct with a woman who used to be his hairdresser, she testified in a new report prepared by a special committee of Missouri’s predominantly Republican House of Representatives. Eli Rosenberg runs through the unsettling details: “[T]he report raised the specter of impeachment for Greitens and prompted another round of calls for Greitens to step down, including by the state’s Republican attorney general and senate hopeful Josh Hawley and Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.… While Greitens has described the extramarital relations as ‘consensual,’ the woman said it included unwanted and potentially coerced sexual acts that she felt afraid to say no to and physical violence, in addition to the threat of photographic blackmail.… The special committee set up to investigate the charge… wrote that it found the woman a credible witness.”
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) (Denis Poroy/AP)
GET SMART FAST:
A sexual assault case against Kevin Spacey is under review by the Los Angeles County district attorney. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the case involves “events” that took place between Spacey and an adult male in 1992 in West Hollywood. ( CNN)
THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
— Federal investigators who raided the office and home of Michael Cohen this week specifically sought out any communications he had with Trump involving the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape. Carol D. Leonnig, Rosalind S. Helderman and David A. Fahrenthold report: “Investigators also sought communications Cohen had with Trump and campaign aides about ‘potential sources of negative publicity’ in the lead-up to the election… The warrant indicates that federal prosecutors may be examining interactions Trump might have had with his longtime attorney about tamping down unflattering stories as he sought to win the White House. At the time, Cohen was a top lawyer at the Trump Organization and not formally affiliated with the campaign. The interest in Cohen’s communications with Trump suggests that the investigation is delving into the president’s actions, legal experts said.” “If they’re specifically going after communications between the president and Cohen, it confirms the investigation does relate to the president in some way,” said Randall Eliason, who teaches white-collar criminal law at GWU Law School.
— Investigators requested records on communications between Cohen and executives at American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. The New York Times’s Jim Rutenberg, Emily Steel and Mike McIntire report: “[T]he tabloid company has been drawn into a sweeping federal investigation of Mr.
