Political Wire

Will Paul Ryan Steal the GOP Nomination?

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Vanity Fair: “Because Ryan is so beloved by many inside the Beltway, some are suggesting that he parachute into a contested Republican convention—one in which Donald Trump fails to win the 1,237 delegates required on the first vote—and become the party’s nominee.”

“There are signs that Ryan is open to being drafted. He didn’t mind the idea of being vice president back in 2012, so maybe he wouldn’t mind the idea of being president today. He has shaved his beard, quieting suspicions of a secret fealty to Islam. He represents the opposite of Trump on many policy fronts, like trade, immigration, and foreign policy. Yes, he has denied interest in the nomination. ‘While I am grateful for the encouragement I’ve received, I will not be a candidate,’ he has averred. But…oh, sorry, that quote is from last October. It’s what Ryan said about becoming Speaker of the House about three weeks before becoming Speaker of the House.“

GOP Campaign Reaches Paul Ryan’s Backyard

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“The Republicans’ presidential campaign has moved into House Speaker Paul Ryan’s backyard, thrusting him further into the vortex of a GOP debate about what kind of party it wants to be,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“With Mr. Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin set to hold the next primary, the unorthodox, from-the-gut campaign of Donald Trump is setting a tone and advancing an agenda that is a far cry from the cerebral, conservative brand of politics that has fueled Mr. Ryan’s rise to the top of the party.”

“The two men personify the fork in the road the GOP now faces, and will be spotlighted when the celebrity businessman travels to Mr. Ryan’s hometown of Janesville on Tuesday to hold a rally in advance of Wisconsin’s April 5 primary.”

Ryan Blasts ‘Ugliness’ of Politics

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House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) delivered a repudiation Wednesday to the “disheartened” state of American politics, blasting the “identity politics” on display in the increasingly toxic Republican presidential primary, the Washington Post reports.

Said Ryan: “Looking around at what’s taking place in politics today, it is easy to get disheartened. How many of you find yourself shaking your head at what you see from both sides of the aisle these days?”

He added: “It did not used to be this bad.”

Ryan Huddles With Big Donors In Effort to Stop Trump

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“House Speaker Paul Ryan met Thursday night at a pricey French restaurant here with some of the Party’s biggest donors to assess a political landscape dominated by one vexing question: what to do about Donald Trump,” Politico reports.

“The dinner was a highlight of a secretive two-day conclave, convened under heavy security by a donor group headed by New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, that is being viewed as a pivotal moment for the big-money effort to block Trump from the Republican presidential nomination.”

Ryan Seeks to Stop Effort to Draft Him

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Speaker Paul Ryan’s political operation is sending a cease-and-desist letter to a group that is trying to draft him as a Republican presidential candidate, urging it to halt its activities and warning of legal risk, Reuters reports.

“With establishment Republicans desperately searching for a way to stop Donald Trump’s march toward the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, Ryan’s name has been mentioned often as an alternative. But he has said he does not want to run for president this year and has disavowed the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan group.”

Trump Has Made Ryan’s Job Harder

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Washington Post: “When he was drafted into the speaker’s chair four months ago, Ryan acknowledged the job would be difficult. But, thanks to Trump, it has become much worse than that. He has come to embody the party establishment’s existential conflict: deeply wary of Trump’s divisive antics but reluctant to reject him entirely.”

Ryan Denounces Trump But Would Still Support Him

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Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) “forcefully denounced” Donald Trump’s “refusal to distance himself from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke,” the New York Times reports.

“But Mr. Ryan did not shift from his position that he would support Mr. Trump if he became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, a perplexing contradiction that reflects the growing anxiety on Capitol Hill over the billionaire businessman’s ascent.”

Ryan Moves to Quell Freedom Caucus Uprising

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Speaker Paul Ryan “is meeting with House Freedom Caucus members late Tuesday night as an uprising simmers in the conservative rank-and-file over government spending levels and increased deficits,” Politico reports.

“The late-night ‘budget and beer’ get-together, which is being hosted by Ryan in his Capitol office, is intended to discuss House Republican spending plans. Just before that meeting, the Freedom Caucus will privately meet without Ryan, according to several sources with knowledge of the gathering.”

Paul Ryan’s Party

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Rick Klein: “As surely as it’s President Obama’s Democratic Party until it won’t be, it’s Paul Ryan’s Republican party until it can’t be any longer. The new House speaker made that clear in Obama’s last State of the Union and Ryan’s first as speaker, new poker (and beardless) face and all.”

“Ryan’s choice of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to deliver the GOP response was borne out by a strong national-debut speech that, notably, took on Donald Trump-style rhetoric (‘angriest voices’) as strongly as it did Obama-style policy. And Ryan took a stand of his own by applauding the president’s call to reject ‘any politics that targets people because of race or religion’ – another clear Trump reference.”

“Coming from Ryan, this is more than the establishment trying to rid itself of Trump. It’s a vision of a future of the GOP, in a House chamber with a different vibe than it had just a few months ago.”

Paul Ryan Wants a More Substantive Republican Party

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Politico: “So as Ryan tries to reassert the party’s substantive side with a series of policy rollouts in the coming months — a conservative replacement to Obamacare, tax reform, a criminal justice bill — he’s also looking to give the House GOP its own identity. The speaker’s effort could also provide his 246 members a layer of insulation from the mess playing out on the national stage.”

“With the presidential candidates sparring over whether to bar Muslims from the United States and discussing the merits of spanking children, top House leadership aides say Ryan is trying to give his party something to run on. There’s almost no chance the GOP will lose the House, but significant double-digit losses are possible if the top of the GOP ticket flounders.”

House GOP Not Willing to Vote on ‘Big Ideas’

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Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) “has said he wants to ‘go big on ideas’ in 2016 to give his party concrete policies to run on and voters an alternative to what Democrats are offering. But those ideas might just remain, well, ideas,” Politico reports.

“Senior House Republican aides and lawmakers say they do not plan to hold votes on many of the agenda items the party plans to unveil — such as a health care plan to replace Obamacare, or tax reform — because of a tight legislative calendar over the next few months and the reality that none of the bills would be signed by the president, anyway.”

How Paul Ryan Hopes to Lead Republicans

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Time: “To be a Republican leader these days is to be hated, by primary voters, Tea Partiers and your own party’s presidential candidates, and for the last several years, it has meant getting very little if anything accomplished. Ryan has set it upon himself to break both of those trends. Rather than serving, as Boehner did, as a punch line for late night television, Ryan intends to lead his party, even amid a presidential campaign, transforming both its focus and its tactics. He is conspiring with his more radical members, while at the same time trying to curb his own party’s radical tendencies. He aims to take the ideology of conservatism, with its fundamentally nostalgic roots, into the 21st Century.”

Said Ryan: “I want to make us the party of ideas, to offer the nation an alternative plan, an agenda. I really believe that we have an obligation given that we don’t like the direction the country is headed, people should be given a choice as to the direction of America. We must offer that vision, should show people what that looks like.”

Paul Ryan Proves More Inclusive as Speaker

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New York Times: “Mr. Ryan has for the most part pushed the privilege of crafting legislation — and with it, the inherent responsibilities — out of the leadership offices and back into the hands of members, replacing Mr. Boehner’s smoke-filled rooms, at least for now, with energy bar-lined committee conference rooms… He has been having weekly dinners in a historic reception room in the Capitol with a vast array of Republican colleagues, unlike Mr. Boehner, who preferred to mingle with a small group of insiders at an Italian eatery nearby. He makes regular rounds on television to make the case for a conservative agenda, unlike Mr. Boehner, who largely eschewed the small screen.”

And Mr. Ryan meets weekly with a newly assembled group of members from the most conservative and most moderate ends of his conference, unlike Mr. Boehner, who tended to surround himself with an inner circle of his peers.”

Ryan Will Lay Out Vision for Republicans

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“With Republicans on Capitol Hill increasingly alarmed by what they hear coming from the presidential campaign trail, Speaker Paul Ryan will seek on Thursday to gain some control over his party’s overarching message and image,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Ryan’s aides described the speech at the Library of Congress as an effort by the speaker to lay out his governing philosophy, discuss the challenges facing the nation and describe the choice that voters will face in the 2016 elections. In his prepared remarks, he indicated that Republicans would use next year to push legislation that illustrates their vision even though President Obama is unlikely to agree.”

Politico notes Ryan will say that House Republicans plan to send “power back to the people” and “make America confident again.”

About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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