Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is in a terrible bind. Not just because he faces the possibility, however remote, that Republicans might lose their majority in next month's elections. And not just because The Donald has proceeded to do everything within his power to give Ryan and other Republican Party leaders as much.. discomfort... as he possibly can.
The real bind that Ryan is in, whether he realizes it or not, is the difficult question of whether it would be best for Republicans to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives the next term or whether it would actually be better for him and his party if they were to lose their majority.
Right now the Republicans do not have a functioning majority. In order to pass anything, they need some Democrats most of the time. But at the same time, they still mostly adhere to the “Hastert rule,” whereby they only advance legislation that has majority support among Republicans. They have, essentially, tied their own hands at the same time as a small, but relatively sizable number (40-50?) of their most right-wing members refuse to compromise...on anything.
There are at least two major GOP factions...lets call them, for the sake of simplicity, Normal Republicans and Pitchfork Wielding Tea Party Republicans.
There aren't enough Normal Republicans (i.e. those who may be conservative and who adhere to basic Republican principles of less government and lower taxes, but who are not obsessed with things like trying to take away women's reproductive rights and trying to shut down the government) to actually pass anything.
And there are too few Pitchfork Wielding Tea Party Republicans (those who not only want to do everything possible to take women's reproductive rights away, but who want to end Obamacare even if it means taking health insurance away from 20 million Americans and who could care less if the government is shut down permanently (and who may actually crave such a thing)) to constitute a majority within the Republican caucus.
It is that dynamic that has led this country to six years of abject negligence and incompetence by the House of Representatives, to the point, where their approval rating is somewhere around 10-12 percent.
The current Republican House and Republican Senate can’t even get together to pass a budget on time, let alone enact any additional legislation that would benefit the people of this country.
If Republicans haven’t been able to accomplish anything with their current majorities and at best face the prospect of even smaller majorities in both the Senate and House next year (though it is highly possible that they lose control of the Senate), why would they even want to keep their House majority if those Pitchfork Wielding Tea Party members will hold an even larger influence over a smaller majority?
My suggestion is that it would actually be in the Republican Party’s best interest to give up their majority status in the House so that they can put their pathetic record of gross negligence and incompetence behind them and reconstitute themselves as a united party where all factions can at least agree on certain priorities.
It also would be helpful to the Republican party if the Pitchfork Wielding Tea Party Republicans in the House were to experience first-hand what it is like to be in the minority. Since The Tea Party movement sprung up in 2009 and helped Republicans take over the House in 2010, they have been part of the majority ever since. In other words, the Pitchfork Wielding Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives do not know what it is like to be in the minority. It would probably be a valuable lesson for them...and their fellow Republicans...to experience that and have to reassess their agenda.
The exact same thing is true for Paul Ryan and his brigade of “Normal Republicans.” It would probably do them...and, more importantly, their party, a lot of good to experience being in the minority, reassess their priorities and try to create a united front at least on some key issues at the top of their agenda.
Ryan can’t get his own Republican majority to actually agree on much of any thing. They haven’t produced any legislation of significance that would be beneficial to the people of this country. They are both unwilling and incapable of actually compromising with President Obama on anything, so will never work with him or Democrats to try to address any major issues in a serious way.
He is between a rock and a hard place. And the best thing for him and his party would be for them to be free of all of the burdens that prevent them from actually governing in a productive way.
Lets throw them an anvil and help them out.