FIRST & FINAL Thoughts On the Week That Was…
FIRST Where is the real Paul Ryan? Where has the energetic and principled conservative that rose quickly through the ranks gone? What’s happened to the man who was the vice-presidential pick during the 2012 campaign to help Mitt Romney quell any doubt people might have had about the former Massachusetts governor’s conservatism.
It seems that Paul Ryan has been replaced by someone who sold out his principles for political expediency.
A sad turn of events.
This week, Rep. Ryan of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District has been working hard behind the scenes in the House to help President Obama pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. While most Democrats in Congress oppose the trade pact, the president is counting on Republicans like Paul Ryan to help him get this through and on his desk for signing.
The members of the establishment wing of the House GOP like Rep. Ryan want to pass the TPP while the conservative members, though supporters of free trade, have reservations about this pact and its fast-track authority. This procedure gives the executive branch power to negotiate trade deals that Congress can approve or reject but gives it no power to amend.
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, one of Conservative First’s leaders in the U.S. Senate, explains in a Breitbart article his concern with this fast-track authority:
Under the fast-track procedure, the President—not Congress—writes implementing legislation for any yet- unseen global trade pact. That legislation, no matter its contents, cannot be amended in any fashion. No individual Member of Congress can alter any line of text, or remove a single provision that violates the will or intent of Congress. That legislation, once called up, is guaranteed a speedy path forward—only 20 hours of debate— and the vote threshold is lowered to a simple majority. No matter how far-reaching the global trade agreement, Congress cannot subject it to the 60 votes applied to important legislation or the 67 votes applied to treaties. Congress will have preapproved swift consideration of sweeping global pacts years before their text has been seen by a single member of this body.
Many conservative members of the House share Senator Sessions’ concern and are holding out either privately or publicly from supporting the TPP.
The vast majority of the very liberal wing of the House of Representatives, who oppose President Obama on his desire to get the bill passed, have joined forces with House conservatives in a very rare showing of bi-partisan support from ideologically polar opposites. Liberals fear that jobs will be in jeopardy should the bill pass while the conservatives fear the Constitution will be upended if Congress is cut out of the loop from having a say in trade deals.
Which brings us back to Rep. Paul Ryan.
A headline from the far left website Salon this week read: “Why Paul Ryan Is Suddenly So Happy to Work With President Obama.” That is not exactly something a constitutional conservative would surely want printed about him or her.
We wonder why he is not on the side of the Constitution and the conservatives who worry about executive overreach. When did he suddenly care more about passing Obama’s agenda and being the leader of the establishment than being a principled defender of the Constitution? Rep. Ryan and Majority Whip Steve Scalise are out gathering votes to ensure the TPP’s passage thus handing President Obama a significant second term victory.
Now we understand that Congress will work with any president if he is wanting something that is good for the country and that both parties can find some common ground on. But how many times has President Obama been right about anything these past six years?
In our eyes, it was the year of 2013 that saw the transformation of Paul Ryan from conservative leader to establishment party player. And perhaps it is no coincidence that this was the year after he was the VP nominee on the GOP ticket with the moderate/establishment Mitt Romney at the top. Did those three plus months as the nominee persuade Paul Ryan to sell out his true principled conservatism for political expediency?
Mr. Ryan penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed in October of 2013 concerning the debt-limit stalemate and failed to mention Obamacare even once! This of course angered the conservative grassroots movement as well as conservative organizations.
Later that year, he worked with the very liberal Senator Patty Murray on the 2013 budget deal that drew strong ire from military veterans and conservatives over its cuts to military retirement benefits. We realize and appreciate Mr. Ryan’s desire to get our fiscal house in order but we were astounded that he started with cuts to our military. There are many places in the federal budget to slash but cutting the benefits of the men and women who served our country to protect us is certainly not the place to begin with.
As for 2015, Rep. Ryan has been on the wrong side of the voting roll call on issues that Conservative First and other organizations have taken. He was one of 75 Republicans to join forces with all 182 Democrats to vote for the Homeland Security funding bill. While it was important to fund Homeland Security, the bill did nothing to prevent the president’s unconstitutional executive amnesty.
He was one of 36 Republicans out of 228 to vote against Rep. Steve King’s amendment to the FY16 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act that would have prevented funds being used to enforce Davis-Bacon wage requirements. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 makes sure that local union wages are paid and thus unfair to non-union firms. Essentially, federal construction projects costs will be significantly higher costing the American taxpayer more.
Rep. Ryan also voted for the Medicare “Doc fix” bill which is supposed to help reform Medicare but many conservatives believe it will add hundreds of billions to the national debt.
A pattern is forming that sees Ryan voting in near lockstep with the establishment and away from fiscal conservatism.
A sad turn of events.
Conservative First is more disappointed in Rep. Paul Ryan than angry with him. He was once an aspiring young and incredibly smart policy wonk who offered conservative vision and ideas to continue America’s greatness and fix the problems that still ailed it. But with these accolades comes high expectations. And while Mr. Ryan quickly rose to the top and at such a young age was selected as the vice-presidential nominee in 2012, the three years since have seen a descending trend towards the establishment moderate class and away from the grassroots conservative movement.
Washington D.C. can be a seductive place; many a men have gone there with the best intentions and high ideals only to be pulled into the vortex of the establishment. Rep. Paul Ryan was once viewed as one of the next generation leaders of the conservative movement only to be marginalized by compromising his beliefs for power.
Now in his mid-40s, Rep. Paul Ryan is no longer that young principled star but we hope that there is still time for the old Paul Ryan, at least in principle, to re-emerge.
But working hard to pass President Obama’s trade pact that has united both liberals and conservatives in opposition is certainly not the first step for that re-emergence.
FINAL This past Monday was conservative filmmaker Frank Capra’s birthday. He was born on May 18, 1897. Mr. Capra helmed some of the most beloved films of all time and won several Oscars for both himself and the films he directed. It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and the now famous Christmastime classic It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) were some of the many films that Mr. Capra directed in his long storied career that peaked in the 1930s with three Best Director Academy Award wins.
Frank Capra made films for the idealistic individual. Upon receiving the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, he said this about his ideals:
The art of Frank Capra is very, very simple: It’s the love of people. Add two simple ideals to this love of people: the freedom of each individual, and the equal importance of each individual, and you have the principle upon which I based all my films.
Frank Capra was a great filmmaker and a great American who contributed mightily to the war effort during World War II through his Why We Fight documentary series. Though American audiences and critics would dismiss his later films, we salute the man who influenced many of today’s well known directors over the the past 50 years.
