Ryan has a lot going for him. But he’s still unlikely to heal a broken House.
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Version 0 of 1. “The House is broken,” Paul D. Ryan acknowledged in his speech to accept the speakership of the House last week. “We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.” He’s right. Ryan (R-Wis.) went on to paint — in the broadest possible strokes — a vision of how he would lead the effort to fix what ails the chamber. “We will not duck the tough issues,” he pledged. “We have nothing to fear from honest differences honestly stated,” he reassured. “Real concrete results” would be produced, he promised. To which I say: Maybe, but leaning toward probably not. There’s no question that Ryan commands more loyalty and respect among the GOP rank and file — particularly on the conference’s ideological right — than John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) did. One example: Ryan got 236 Republican votes for speaker Thursday; Boehner got 216 when he was reelected in January. The vast majority of those vote switches came from the ranks of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose chairman, Ohio’s Jim Jordan, also voted for Ryan. (He may have won their loyalty by pledging not to bring up immigration reform legislation in the House until after President Obama is out of office. “I do not believe we should, and we won’t, bring immigration legislation with a president we cannot trust on this issue,” Ryan said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”) Undoubtedly, circumstances have conspired to give Ryan the best possible chance of succeeding. Not only will he benefit from a honeymoon period of goodwill among members of Congress but he won’t have to engage in the budget brinksmanship that defined Boehner’s tenure. That is thanks to the budget deal Boehner negotiated last week with the Senate and the White House, which, although hated by conservatives, takes the prospect of a government shutdown or a default via the debt limit off the table until 2017. That’s a lot of things Ryan has going for him! But deep structural problems exist — in the House rules, our political process and the changing ways we live together (and apart) — that will make it harder than you might think for Ryan to heal a broken House. Among those problems: 1. The earmark ban. In his farewell address, Boehner touted his ban on earmarks as a signature achievement of his time as speaker. And it was. But by taking away the leadership’s ability to sweeten the pot for individual lawmakers trying to bring home goodies for their districts, Boehner set in motion a process that led to his semi-forced resignation. Without a carrot to offer wavering members on contentious legislation, leadership had to rely almost exclusively on relationships and goodwill. Study the results of tough votes over the past few years to see how far that gets you in the current incarnation of the House. (Hint: Not far.) 2. The rise of outside conservative groups. If Boehner robbed GOP leaders of the carrot, then groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action robbed them of the stick. The rise of these organizations, which not only preached ideological purity but also demonstrated an ability to raise lots and lots of money for that cause, meant that the party leadership could no longer choke off campaign funds to those who refused to fall in line. Quite the opposite: Bucking the party leadership or refusing to play nice delivers conservative members a considerable windfall, financially speaking. 3. Polarization in the country. There are lots of reasons that people these days tend to line up more uniformly behind one party or the other — redistricting, self-sorting, rise of the partisan media — but the outcome is the same: We, as a nation, agree on less than ever before. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center showed that 92 percent of Republicans are more ideologically conservative than the median Democrat, and that 94 percent of Democrats are more liberal than the mean Republican. Compare that with a 1994 Pew study that found that the median Democrat was to the left of 64 percent of Republicans, and the median Republican to the right of 70 percent of Democrats. There is just not much middle ground left in America anymore. 4. Polarization in Congress. Not surprisingly, given the rising polarization in the country, the people we elect have become increasingly partisan, too. The 2010 election resulted in the ouster of dozens of centrist Democrats, the vast majority of whom were replaced by more ideologically pure Republicans. The “Big Sort” happening in the country has been reflected in Congress over the past five years; only 26 of the 247 House Republicans hold districts that Obama won in 2012, for example. The tectonic plates of our society — and our politics — are shifting. Can Ryan, through force of personality and circumstance, stop or reverse those shifts? Probably not. |