Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (Photo: Facebook)
House Speaker Paul Ryan is the most recent Republican leader to announce he’ll quit his post. Ryan told his confidants that there won’t be another run for re-election in November. House Republicans were already in a very tough spot for the midterms—with many other endangered members and the likelihood of the Democrats securing a majority status. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it a “Titanic, tectonic shift” and said this would “make every Republican donor believe the House can’t be held.” The pair most likely to take Speaker Ryan’s place is Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise. But the latter has said he won’t run against McCarthy who now seems to have the first bite at the apple.
Speaker Ryan’s announcement had already been anticipated a while ago when Politico’s Tim Alberta reported back in December that there was this possibility of his “wild Washington journey coming to an end” but Ryan’s deliberations were held very closely until the final minute. Ryan, 48, was the Republican VP nominee on Mitt Romney’s ticket against Obama and he is widely known for having harbored presidential ambitions. His personal acquaintances have already said he could make another run for the nation’s highest office in the distant future. Also spoken of Ryan was that after the Speaker passed tax reforms, his long-held dream, he was prepared to quit the job that had become unimaginably exhausting—in no small part due to President Trump.
The bigger issue is that as November rolls around, there will be at least 58 vacated seats in the House up for grabs—with more than two-thirds of those vacancies occupied by Republican incumbents. This is of paramount significance because incumbents are massively advantageous under the current election framework which allows them to outperform their non-incumbent competitors (even of the same party) in the same districts by more than seven points, according to widely accepted scholarship. In fact, the Republican Party already saw a record number of retirements from chairman posts the past many months, and must now begin to navigate their waters by finding themselves a new leader among other things.
Some notable names out include Orrin Hatch (UT), Chairman of Senate Finance Committee, Gregg Harper (MS), Chairman of House Administration Committee, Diane Black (TN), Chairwoman of Budget Committee, Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ), Chairman of Appropriations Committee, Bob Goodlatte (VA), Chairman of Judiciary Committee, Trey Gowdy (SC), Chairman of Oversight Committee, Jeb Hensarling (TX), Chairman of Financial Services Committee, Ed Royce (CA), Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, Bill Shuster (PA), Chairman of Transportation Committee and Lamar Smith (TX), Chairman of Science, Space, and Technology Committee. A majority of these retiring committee chairmen and chairwomen are a natural extension of their party term-limits, as Republican rules, for instance, put a cap on House chairman term to a maximum of six years. But it’s hard to say whether or not these same politicians would have made another shot at public office had they had the alternative to retain their current posts.
Also, the November elections translate to some mammoth stakes for team Trump in the White House, too. If Democrats take the House and they somehow succeed in putting Nancy Pelosi in Speaker Ryan’s stead, President Trump faces endless subpoenas and perhaps impeachment proceedings. Pundits see a number of key “red flags” for the House GOP majority. First, the massive correlation between the president’s approval rating and his first-term local election losses is one of those patterns that cannot go unnoticed. In the six times that the president’s job approval numbers were punching well below the 50 percent threshold, the average losses ended up with more than 40 fewer seats in the House. The Democrats only need a two dozen to flip the game.
Second, “PA + CA = 1/2 mission complete.” California is pretty much the citadel for the remnants of GOP recalcitrance—with a little more than a dozen House Republicans barely holding onto their bastion. Between the serial retirement announcements, losses taking place across state-and-local tax reform bill, and the overall air of disapproval vis-à-vis Trump in a powerfully left-leaning State of California, all of this could result in a gigantic loss: nearly half its regional GOP delegation. The new Pennsylvania map after redistricting—with similar anti-Trump delineations—could spell hefty toll for the GOP—in fact as many as six seats. These two states alone, if done right for the Democrats, could get them pretty much halfway, or more, to a House DNC majority.
Lastly, the issue of Trump coalition is probably the biggest factor and “wildcard” of the upcoming November elections. Just as we witnessed with the Obama administration some while ago, with voters in the midterms of 2010 as well as 2014, it seems like the unique coalition which formed around Trump’s presidential campaign won’t be turning out for generic House members of the President’s party. Just as Obama voters didn’t bother turning out for the rest of the Democratic Party and its affiliated House members, Trump aficionados whose political orientation is almost entirely centered on the one figure that is Donald Trump won’t come out and vote for House Republicans. Trump ran on the promise of “draining the swamp.” But you don’t drain the swamp by voting for the same establishment that fashioned shape of today’s political status quo.
Bureaucrat by day and writer by night, Schoni Song is a program officer at the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. When not doing anything related to politics, he's likely contemplating about food, film and culture. Schoni can be reached at schoni0124@naver.com or mseap@assembly.go.kr. - Ed. |
