In the mid-1940s, a young British college student wrote a pamphlet with fellow Oxford students urging a new path for conservatives in England. The pamphlet urged returning the Tories to a party of certain bedrock principles: that "the individual is more important than the system," and that "individual enterprise is the mainspring of all progress."
The pamphlet cautioned that a "reorientation of conservatism" was necessary "if the party is to avoid annihilation," and urged conservatives to be "much clearer in the past as to what its basic principles are." Consequently, the party needed "house cleaning."
That Oxford student, of course, was Margaret Thatcher, who four decades later would remake Britain in this image she envisioned in the 1940s.
In America, the 1990s spawned a similar mind dedicated to remaking the Republican Party into one tethered to conservative principles. In 1998, Paul Ryan won his first seat in Congress espousing free markets, lower taxes and less regulation — principles he upheld throughout his near 20 years representing Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District in Congress.
Yet unlike Thatcher, Ryan was unable to see his vision through to fruition. On Wednesday, the speaker of the House announced he would not be seeking re-election in 2018, ending two decades of being wedged between principle and politics.
As far back as 2008, when a big-spending Republican Party was being hammered at the polls, Ryan urged a "house cleaning" in the Thatcher mold. "We don’t need a feather duster; we need a fire hose," he said of purging the party of those unwilling to advance the Republican Party’s core ideals.
In 2015, Ryan reluctantly took control of the speakership of the House GOP, a job many believed only he could do. But the party Ryan agreed to lead had shifted beneath him. In 2016, the nation suffered a convulsion with the election of Donald Trump, a presidential candidate largely anathema to every ideal Ryan held.
Just four years earlier, Ryan had been the Republican nominee for vice president. Suddenly, with the party bending to Trump’s will, Ryan became the scapegoat for everything wrong with conservatism. He endured enmity heaped upon him by Trump supporters (and Trump himself, who called Ryan a "weak and ineffective leader") and Trump opponents critical of him for not doing enough to counteract the GOP nominee’s outlandish behavior.
When Trump was elected, the Republican Party ceased to be one that talked about individual liberties and upward mobility. Being a Republican in the Trump era meant excusing racially insensitive remarks made by the president, dismissing hush payments made to porn actresses, and condemning serious investigations into Trump’s attempts to obstruct other investigations. The party of individual responsibility packed its bags and left for a bellicose strongman who promised to care for all of Americans’ needs through the sheer force of his personality.
And now Ryan has had enough. While he was able to pass a version of tax reform to his liking, Ryan likely saw no appetite and no path forward in Congress to change the nation’s entitlement programs, which are on schedule to sink the economy in the years ahead. He has had enough of gritting his teeth and pretending the Trump era is normal in hopes of passing legislation that will far outlast the president.
In 2010, I sat down with Ryan during the days when his star within the GOP was on the rise and asked him when he was going to seek national office. I recounted Act I, Scene II of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar — in which Caesar refuses the crown three times before his adoring fans force him to accept it.
Ryan smiled, paused, and said, "And how’d that work out for him?"
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Re: What has become of the Republican Party?
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Originally Posted by Katsumoto
ing argument.
