House ‘vote no, hope yes’ caucus may hold key to Ryan’s success as speaker

Paul D. Ryan did not want to be speaker, but on Wednesday he came one step closer to taking the gavel and becoming one of the nation’s most powerful legislators, amid serious divisions within his own party.

Ryan faced one of the biggest challenges he will likely confront as speaker before he’s even been formally chosen. The Wisconsin Republican and 2012 vice presidential nominee was tested twice Wednesday. The first came when his colleagues met to cast secret ballots for their preferred nominee for speaker. Ryan received 200 votes but will need 218 on the floor Thursday to assume the speakership.

Then the House voted on a budget bill, which, if enacted, would defuse for two years the fiscal time bombs and deadlines that divided House Republicans and led to John Boehner’s resignation as speaker. The legislation would extend the debt limit — or the government’s ability to pay debts it has already accrued — through March 2017 and set spending caps to avert shutdowns through the next two fiscal years, both easing Ryan’s learning curve and aiding the national party by eliminating those financial threats in a presidential campaign year.

Seventy-nine Republicans joined a majority of Democrats to prevent a default and boost government spending by $80 billion over the next two years, offset by entitlement reforms and cuts elsewhere. Although that was not a majority of the party, Ryan has vowed that, moving forward, he will try to push legislation that garners a majority of Republican support for passage. Of course, that was a goal for Boehner too, who relied repeatedly on Democrats to keep the government’s lights on and bills paid.

But while Ryan waded into the race for speaker with party unity as a condition of his bid, questions remain over how he will be able to enforce it, given the entrenched political differences within his own conference. A group of 40 to 60 hard-right mostly antigovernment conservatives have wreaked havoc in what the establishment had hoped would be a governing majority. Together with powerful conservative outside groups like Heritage Action and the Club for Growth, that faction forced other members to compile more hardline voting records lest they face primaries from the right.

In the wake of Boehner’s resignation and the sudden decision by No. 2 Republican Kevin McCarthy of California to drop his bid for speaker, much of the attention has focused on the House Freedom Caucus, a group of 40 or so conservatives who were a constant thorn in the GOP leadership’s side, threatening multiple efforts to “vacate the chair” or use floor procedure to kick out Boehner.

And part of that attention is deserved: Their demands of the next speaker are not insubstantial. As Yahoo News reported earlier this week, House Freedom Caucus members are seeking an overhaul of House rules that could enhance their influence at the expense of the speaker’s power in important areas such as assigning members to committees.

But there is a more overlooked faction of House Republicans, according to Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an ally of the leadership. Cole calls them the “vote no, hope yes” caucus. These are members who vote with the most conservative members of their conference because they believe it’s the most politically expedient thing to do, but not necessarily the right thing.

In an interview in the Capitol basement Tuesday, moments after Republicans had a conference meeting that doubled as a review of the pending budget agreement and a farewell to Boehner, Cole pointed to those members as key to Wednesday’s budget vote as well as to Ryan’s future.

“There’s really three groups in our conference — there’s 40 to 60 Freedom Caucus guys. … [Y]ou’ve got 70 or 90 what I call ‘governing Republicans’ who are there almost every time leadership has to make a call. But we got about a comparable-size group, 70 to 90 in the middle, who will vote no and hope yes,” Cole said. “And that caucus needs to step up. John Boehner deserves a majority of support on the last deal of a distinguished career, and frankly, I would argue that Paul Ryan needs that kind of support going forward.

“This is one where people have to do the right thing for the conference and not worry about the political consequences for individuals,” Cole said.

Ryan will need support from members torn between the establishment and the tea party in order to succeed as speaker. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

That sort of logic might be wishful thinking, however, as leadership struggles in a new era of congressional politics to wrangle the support of those members who are on the fence. Members didn’t always vote out of the goodness of their hearts or obligation to what was best for the country or party. But before the conservative takeover of 2010, House leaders had several tools to induce members to vote with the speaker, including “earmarks” for district spending (which Republicans eliminated in 2010) and the threat of withholding campaign funds (less important now that ideologically motivated outside groups spend freely on campaigns).

Now politicians are more concerned about scorecards from powerful outside groups that vet their ideological purity — and come with purse strings attached.

In his last press conference as speaker, Boehner touted the deal and spoke bluntly about those who would oppose it.

“When you’ve got a bipartisan agreement in a town that isn’t known for a lot of bipartisanship, you’re going to see bricks flying from those who don’t like the fact that there’s a bipartisan agreement. But there is. It’s a solid agreement and I told my colleagues there isn’t any reason why any member should vote against this,” Boehner said.

“Sometimes the clock works against you. Sometimes the clock works for you,” he continued, on how he, the White House and Democrats brokered a last-minute deal that could assure more solid footing for his successor. “I didn’t want him to walk into a dirty barn full of you-know-what.”

The barn might be a little cleaner, but Ryan will still be dealing with an intransigent right wing who extracted a hefty price for their support. He has told members he will not pursue immigration reform while Barack Obama is in office. He also has said he will try to abide by the so-called Hastert Rule, which dictates that legislation passed on the floor should pass with a majority of Republican votes.

In order to live up to that promise, something in the Republican Party is going to have to change, whether by the will of Ryan or something else.

“The Hastert rule requires courage of the members,” Cole said. “I know too many people who said, ‘Well, I hope this passes but I can’t vote for it.’ They’ve got to be willing to vote for it. Otherwise, you isolate your leaders from your membership and it looks like a minority is running your conference when that’s not the case.”

(Cover tile photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)