Just days into his new job as speaker of the House, Paul D. Ryan has plenty left to prove. But in a flurry of media appearances, he has already made a down payment on a key pledge to fellow Republicans: to become the fresh face of and spokesman for a party in need of a new standard-bearer.
From his hometown newspaper to an influential conservative radio program to five Sunday talk shows, Ryan has spent his early days as speaker in front of cameras and microphones, speaking out on a need for a new and bold Republican vision that can unify disparate wings of the party.
The reviews, so far, are glowing.
“This is music to the ears of people from the Freedom Caucus,” said Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), a member of the hard-right House group that has been deeply critical of GOP leaders. “This is what we’ve been asking for.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.): “It’s obvious there’s a new sheriff in town.” Cole, a leadership ally, said Ryan offered a “great contrast . . . not only with his predecessor but with our opposition.”
But as he moves to plot a path forward for congressional Republicans who have garnered more attention recently for division and obstruction than for ideas and policy, Ryan faces a delicate task. He must navigate a host of GOP presidential hopefuls with diverging policy views and Democrats who see him as a perfect ideological foil and who have plenty of experience in exploiting his policy proposals in a high-stakes campaign year.
Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Tuesday that Ryan’s ascent represents a “windfall” to Democratic candidates up and down the 2016 ticket.
“This is a guy who wanted to take $800 billion from Medicare to give tax cuts to the rich,” he said. “We’ll debate that any day. . . . His ideas have been, are and will continue to be harmful to America’s middle class, and the more out-front he is advancing those ideas, the better it is for Democrats.”
In his years as House Budget Committee chairman, Ryan laid out spending blueprints that embraced ideas such as privatizing portions of Social Security, cutting Medicaid and converting Medicare to a voucher-based program — all of which provided fodder for Democratic attacks.
Addressing reporters on Tuesday at his first news conference as speaker, Ryan said he would not shy away from presenting controversial policy prescriptions in an election year.
“We’re going to go on offense on ideas and give the country a bold alternative agenda because we don’t think the country’s heading in the right direction right now,” he said. “We need to go a different direction. And we owe it to the country to show that different direction.”
Traditionally, however, it’s the presidential nominee — not congressional leaders — who have been handed a wide berth to set each major party’s agenda in an election year. And the bolder Ryan gets, the more troublesome it could be for the GOP nominee.
In 1996, notably, Democrats tied then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had presided over a series of government shutdowns the prior year, to Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.
"Democrats greeted me with a number of negative TV ads, and in every one of them Newt was in the ad," Dole said in a 2012 statement attacking Gingrich while the latter man was amid his own presidential campaign. "He was very unpopular, and I am not only certain that this did not help me, but that it also cost House seats that year."
But Ryan, so far, is a less polarizing figure than Gingrich ever was, and on Capitol Hill Tuesday, there was little sense among Republicans that Ryan’s pursuit of a more robust GOP vision could backfire.
“Paul has a way of communicating conservative principles, ideas and solutions in a way that’s sweet to the ear of the independent and even the thoughtful Democrat,” said Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.). “People know he genuinely cares, and for someone to go down [to the House floor] and say, ‘Mr. Speaker, this plan shows total disregard for the elderly and the poor’ — that just isn’t going to stick to Paul Ryan.”
Cole, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Ryan’s ideas have had immense influence on the GOP campaign agendas for several election cycles now and that any presidential nominee would be “foolish” not to embrace them.
“We all recognize that the nominee, whoever that is, will have a disproportionate influence on what Republicans are saying and doing in the fall,” he said. “But I think any nominee is going to be informed by what Paul Ryan has already laid out. Quite frankly, it’ll probably be better thought through than anything any campaign can produce.”
The tax plans put forth by the 2016 GOP presidential nominees hew by and large to the principles Ryan has embraced in the past — reducing the number of income tax brackets, lowering rates, and eliminating loopholes and deductions. But Ryan’s ideas on reforming entitlement programs could prove more divisive. National front-runner Donald Trump, for instance, has pushed back on suggestions of major changes to Social Security and Medicare.
Still, for the moment, the policy void Ryan is seeking to fill in the House is just as gaping in the presidential race.
“If you listen to the presidential candidates, only one or two of them have aspirational visions, and the others are throwing rocks at each other,” said Rep. Bill Flores (R-Tex.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee. “If we can be not only the planter of the seeds for that bold vision, but also provide some of that initial fertilizer, that can be picked up by the candidates.”
Ryan on Tuesday said he was “not concerned” about the presidential race: “That’s going to work itself out. What I am concerned about is making sure that we do our jobs here. We were elected by our constituents to represent their interests here in Congress. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
David Weigel contributed to this report.
