| New York Times | - |
WASHINGTON
- Far-right media figures, relatively small in number but potent in
their influence, have embarked on a furious Internet expedition to cover
Representative Paul D. Ryan in political silt.
WASHINGTON
— Far-right media figures, relatively small in number but potent in
their influence, have embarked on a furious Internet expedition to cover
Representative Paul D. Ryan in political silt.
In 2012 when Mitt Romney
picked Mr. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, as his running mate, the
concern among some in their party was that Mr. Ryan was too
conservative, particularly when it came to overhauling social programs
like Medicare and Medicaid.
Now,
as he agonizes over whether to answer the appeal of his colleagues to
become their next speaker, the far right is trotting out a fresh
concern: Mr. Ryan is too far left.
He is being criticized on issues ranging from a 2008 vote to bail out large banks to his longstanding interest in immigration reform to his work on a bipartisan budget measure.
On Sunday night, the Drudge Report — a prime driver of conservative
commentary — dedicated separate headlines to bashing Mr. Ryan on policy
positions.
Even a self-congratulatory book outlining how Mr. Ryan and two other Republican House leaders drafted Tea Party candidates to help them take over the House in 2010 — “Young Guns” — is being recast by some as a manual of how to be traitorous to conservatism.
Graphic: The Power of the Hard-Line Republicans in the Race for House Speaker
“Tryouts
for speaker continue,” Phyllis Schlafly, founder and chairwoman of the
conservative Eagle Forum, said in a statement Friday, when Mr. Ryan was
escaping Capitol Hill for the week. “The kingmakers are so desperate for
someone to carry their liberal priorities that they are trying to force
Congressman Paul Ryan into a job he does not want.”
The
influence of conservative websites has enraged members who were once
considered right of center themselves, and who are desperately trying to
keep Mr. Ryan from getting spooked.
“Anyone
who attacks Paul Ryan as being insufficiently conservative is either
woefully misinformed or maliciously destructive,” said Representative
Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. “Paul Ryan has played a major role in
advancing the conservative cause and creating the Republican House
majority. His critics are not true conservatives. They are radical
populists who neither understand nor accept the institutions, procedures
and traditions that are the basis of constitutional governance.”
To some degree, the attacks on Mr. Ryan, so far an unwilling draft pick by his colleagues to replace Speaker John A. Boehner, reflect criticism of flashes of pragmatism by Mr. Ryan, the architect of his party’s conservative budget dogma.
Since
the 2012 general election defeat, Mr. Ryan has indeed become more of a
consensus builder and leader in the House, even as he has maintained his
ideological tilt. He has largely voted for bills to keep the government
operating and the debts paid when many other Republicans vote against
them these days.
He
was half the brain on a 2013 compromise with Senator Patty Murray,
Democrat of Washington, to funnel more money to the government and avert
two years of budget brinkmanship, even though two years earlier, he had
refused to sit on the original committee that tried and failed to find a
solution to the government’s financial problems.
Mr.
Ryan moved this year to the chairmanship of the tax-writing Ways and
Means Committee from the Budget Committee because he said he wanted even
greater influence on national fiscal policy, and his prescriptions are
anathema to most Democrats.
But
the current flak following Mr. Ryan stems from a growing and powerful
collection of far-right pundits and news media — from Mark Levin to
Laura Ingraham to the sites RedState and Breitbart and the new
Conservative Review — that have successfully wielded influence over
Republican voters and lawmakers in strongly conservative districts.
Their bill of particulars against Mr. Ryan have shifted from the national debt
and spending to immigration. Lately, they have focused on Mr. Ryan’s
enthusiastic support for free trade, traditionally a policy that has
gotten broad Republican support but is now being used as a bat against
him. Beyond Mr. Ryan, the conservative targets have seemingly shifted
from old time establishment lawmakers to a process seemingly more akin
to random selection.
Possible Candidates for a Brokered House Speaker Race
With Representative Kevin McCarthy’s stunning decision
to withdraw from the race for speaker on Thursday, the Republican
leadership elections were turned upside down. The competitive races were
supposed to be those for lower-tier positions. Now the big uncertainty
is who the next speaker will be.
On Monday, a Tea Party
group in Alabama set out warning flares to Representative Martha Roby, a
Republican, advising her that she would come under fire if she
supported Mr. Ryan for speaker.
While the influence of Fox news on conservative voters has
been well documented, “There’s a lot we don’t know about this bumper
crop of digital news start-ups of the past five or 10 years, especially
ad-supported ones,” said Jesse Holcomb the associate director of
journalism research at the Pew Research Center. “Many aren’t public and
don’t produce earnings statements and aren’t required to release
information on revenue or profit margins.”
But House Republicans and their staff say millions of Republican primary voters have their opinions shaped by sites like Breitbart.com,
which define a version of the conservative position of the moment, then
whip their readers into a frenzy, imploring them to oppose anyone who
takes a different position.
“Our
goal is not influence; it is reporting and highlighting stories
important to grass roots conservatives,” said Alex Marlow, the editor in
chief of Breitbart. “To those in Congress and on the national political
stage who want to better understand this constituency’s interests and
worldview, we feel Breitbart News is a good place to start. Our focus on
issues like spending, trade and particularly immigration are a
reflection of the fact that there are massive populations of
center-right Americans who do not favor the policies most often
associated with the Republican Party establishment.”
Mr.
Boehner, for instance, once considered unquestionably conservative, was
forced out by his right flank. His would-be successor, Representative
Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, abruptly withdrew from the speaker’s race, also the target of Internet rancor that he was too much like Mr. Boehner.
The
conservative rap on Mr. Ryan’s fiscal positions is especially curious.
As Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan was the author of plans that
would convert Medicare
into something akin to a voucher plan, where seniors would get
government subsidies to purchase private insurance and move away from
government-run health care.
He also wanted to turn Medicaid
into increasingly tight block grants to state governments, and he also
called for drastic cuts in food stamps, Pell grants and many other
domestic programs.
But
in 2013, Mr. Ryan and Ms. Murray reached an agreement, which passed 332
to 94 in the House, that modestly raised spending restrictions on
military and domestic programs for two years, bringing temporary peace
to the incessant budget wars that are now eliciting the wrath of the
conservative industrial complex.
Immigration
is proving to be an even more ripe area for venomous assessment of Mr.
Ryan. He pressed for a vote on an immigration reform bill with his
Republican colleagues in 2013, noting that “earned legalization is an
issue I think the House can and will deal with” but was rebuffed.
While
53 percent of Republicans support some earned path to citizenship for
immigrants living in the country illegally, said Robert P. Jones, the
chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, citing a 2013 poll, “support drops well below majority to 45 percent among Republicans who identify with the Tea Party,” he said.
The
question for Mr. Ryan, now ensconced in Wisconsin with his family while
Congress is in recess, is whether the heat from the right is worth the
fight or whether he will gamble that he can overrun them and win far in
excess of the 218 votes needed to elected speaker in spite of all that
noise, and start off strong and ready for the next round.
Correction: October 12, 2015
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect first name for the editor in chief of a publication whose goal, he said, was to highlight stories important to grass roots conservatives, and it misspelled the name of the publication. The editor in chief is Alex Marlow, not Andrew, and the publication is Breitbart, not Brietbart.
An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect first name for the editor in chief of a publication whose goal, he said, was to highlight stories important to grass roots conservatives, and it misspelled the name of the publication. The editor in chief is Alex Marlow, not Andrew, and the publication is Breitbart, not Brietbart.
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