Home » Who is Paul Ryan and why do all these people hate him?

Comments

Who is Paul Ryan and why do all these people hate him? — 39 Comments

  1. I can’t remember when exactly I grew unhappy with Ryan. But I do remember that it was due to something he did almost immediately after the 2012 election. And I think the triggering event was a sudden announcement of support for amnesty for illegal immigrants.

  2. I’m rather sick of all the people wo seem to think only in soundbites and don’t even bother to see weter the sounbites are coherent. Ryan is not a dictator. As Speaker, he is more of a cat herder, and people can’t accept the fact tat all the cats don’t want to march in the same direction.
    I don’t agree with everything Ryan says, but at least he seems willing to listen to others and try to incorporate their concerns into his policy proposals.

  3. Ryan is a good example of a necessary wonk, the budget expert. Usually these guys are not also the leader but could be. However, it’s easy to get caught up in this and fail to be a leader as well. You are trying to get something done, while satisfying regional, political and personal issues within an intricate legal maze. You end up not understanding how this looks to an outsider. The speaker of the house should never be a budget guru. One technique that was never really tried was to eliminate the Omnibus budget and pass individual spending bills (defense, health, agriculture etc.) within some global targets. Tough to do. It helps if the Presidential candidates were willing to ask the public to give up some perk or grant to move forward.

  4. junior:

    There was no sudden announcement of support for amnesty.

    Of course, if you consider anything short of deporting every single illegal immigrant “amnesty,” then Ryan and just about everyone else in 2012 (including, by the way, Donald Trump) supported “amnesty.”

    This was Ryan’s immigration policy in 2012 when he was running for VP.

    After that election, I’m assuming he supported the Gang of 8 bill but I’ve found little on that except Breitbart propaganda and innuendo. I’ve gone into the Gang of 8 issues in general before, and I realize it’s a very heated topic. Suffice to say right now that I can’t find his exact position on it at the time as opposed to anti-Ryan spin (and the bill was in the Senate, not the House were Ryan is).

    If you want his current position you can find it here. I have no problem with it, and it seems somewhat similar to Trump’s actual position (that is, if you include touchback amnesty and the like for Trump).

    Ryan has also said this about immigration under Obama: “[Ryan] will not bring up comprehensive immigration reform ‘so long as Barack Obama is president’ and, as speaker, Ryan will not allow any immigration bill to reach the floor for a vote unless a ‘majority’ of GOP members support it.”

    I happen to think that deportation of all illegal immigrants is a sham, undoable, would backfire, and would not happen under Trump, either. I happen to think that Ryan’s proposals seem fine. You may differ on that. But I also happen to think that most of what is said about Ryan—on immigration as well as many other things—is propaganda by those who would have the right turn on him.

    If you’re talking about the Breitbart spiel that Ryan is for “open borders,” that’s garbage. It’s sad what Breitbart (the website, that is) has become.

    Again, this is not to say that Ryan’s immigration policy is flawless. He was for expanding the H-1B visa program, for example, when it came up for a vote a while back (and Trump supported an expansion recently in one of the debates—remember?). If you want perfection and perfect agreement, I’m sure he won’t suit you. But he’s nowhere near as bad as the anti-Ryan propaganda would have it.

  5. Neo –

    Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact details of what happened. I just remember that it was after the election (i.e. after 2012), and I think it was immigration-related.

    I’m not even sure about that last bit, though.

    So far as I can remember, Ryan was still well-liked by conservatives through the end of the election. It was only afterwards that people on the right started to turn against him.

    On another note, pretty much any time that I criticize something Trump said in front of a Trump supporter, I get a “that’s the media distorting what he said!!1!” response in defense of Trump. I found it hilarious the other day when you put up your post that laid out a strong argument that Ryan – a favorite punching bag of many Trump fans – had that happen to him.

  6. junior:

    While you were writing your comment just above this, I was adding a bit to mine. So you might want to take another look at it.

    One thing to note is that many people who don’t like Ryan can’t really remember exactly why, or where they got their information. That’s how propaganda works—it seeps into the brain. I’d be curious what it was—I strongly believe, based on what I’ve seen, that there was a concerted effort by the MSM and by some on the right to make people hate Ryan. It’s worked.

  7. I would not for one minute want to be a member of the House, let along its speaker. There’s a June 8th piece at The Hill that gives a good taste of how things work there — an excerpt:

    Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) used most of a conference meeting Wednesday morning to outline the party’s new strategy to unjam the appropriations process. For remaining spending bills, all amendments will be approved by the House Rules Committee before the debate reaches the floor.

    GOP leaders hope the new rules will lend control to what has been a chaotic appropriations process this spring. Several Republicans in the room said Ryan described it as a last-ditch attempt to block Democrats’ “poison pills,” amendments they say are designed to derail the underlying spending legislation.

    He specifically pointed to the Democratic amendment condemning LGBT discrimination that was added to the energy and water bill last month. Democrats then opposed the bill on the floor because of spending levels, helping to sink the entire legislation.

    But the abrupt shift is also striking fear in some more conservative members, who believe leadership could block Republican-led amendments considered risky votes in an election year.

    “Our leadership is using this as an excuse to close down the process,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said after the meeting.

    “Ostensibly, it would protect Republicans from Democrats. What they could try to do is protect all Republicans from taking difficult votes, which may be conservative issues,” Massie said.

    The decision to move away from an open-rule process was likely a tough choice for Ryan, a former Budget Committee chairman, who has vowed to restore regular order to the appropriations process.

    “I think it was something he probably preferred not to do, but he felt like he had to do,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “That’s his responsibility as Speaker. You have to make some tough decisions.”

  8. ann:

    Most people haven’t a clue what members of Congress are up against when they try to get something passed.

  9. Neo –

    I know that a lot of blog-frequenting conservatives would take exception with the “Getting Right with the Law” section of the link that you provided to Ryan’s website, particularly the section at the very end in bold. You can argue over whether deporting them all is practical (one thing that I liked about Romney’s plan was that it was about convincing the illegals to leave voluntarily), but there are a lot of vocal people who are pretty much zero tolerance on this point. And they’re the kind of people who are loud enough and persistant enough to drag others along with them.

  10. Neo:

    About that “concerted effort” to make people hate Ryan — the Democrats have been all over it, starting with Nancy Pelosi out front saying how he “gave away the store” on the omnibus bill he’d inherited from Boehner.

  11. junior:

    No doubt a lot of people wouldn’t like some of what Ryan espouses.

    My point is that they don’t even bother to find out what he actually espouses and what is a propagandist lie about him. And the Trump supporters ignore it when Trump espouses the very same things as Ryan, which he often does by backtracking and then backtracking again, covering all bases.

  12. Ann:

    Yes, the Democrats are very good at manipulating the anger of GOP voters to the benefit of Democrats.

  13. Neo, you pretty well summed up the problem with the American electorate in the 21st century. Ignorance of how our government is intended to function; impatience with how it does function; reliance on easy to obtain information–which so often is false and self-serving for one entity or another; insufficient interest in becoming an informed and engaged citizen. Not to mention the segment that is purely selfish and only interested in what the government will give. Did I miss anything?

    Seemingly never occurs to some critics that those aspects which cause them so much angst are exactly the protections that were designed into the system. Sure, the government can move quickly when the Administration puts on the pressure, and the Congress abdicates its role. Then we get programs such as Obamacare.

    Junior, I would feel bad about singling you out; except that you did it yourself after Neo’s well researched and exhaustive discussion of what Ryan has done, and not done, said, and not said. So, you cannot remember what he did that pissed you off (sorry, but I can’t think of a more appropriate characterization). You just know that you don’t like Ryan for some reason, or other.

  14. Oldflyer – Crazy thought: maybe the problem isn’t that people have suddenly become ignorant of the complexities of the system, but that people suddenly think they’re not ignorant. As a society we think that we’re equal of scientists because we read a Wikipedia article, we’re experts in legislation after listening to talk radio, et cetera. I don’t really know where I’m going with this thought. But we all seem to be acting like the Chris Elliot character on Letterman, smug and condescending but without any basis for being so.

  15. Oldflyer:

    Actually, even Obamacare took quite a while to enact. And remember how Scott Brown was elected to stop it, and how the Democrats came up with reconciliation?

  16. I am rather neutral when it comes to Ryan. I thought it showed a reluctant form of ‘bravery’ for him to agree to the Speakership.

  17. Oldflyer:
    “You just know that you don’t like Ryan for some reason, or other.”

    Neo quoting snopercod:
    “Ryan is found wanting when it comes to results.”

    It’s like being a fan of a sports team. We can fathom only a fraction of the operational mechanics, as much as we grouse about the team and the sport and the flood of information and ostensible expert commentary about it in the public discourse, but in the end, we judge the wins and losses. Fan pressure for wins, which motivates the team to win, also, when combined with fan misunderstanding of the operational mechanics, can adversely affect the process needed to build a perennially winning team.

    A team’s fans can be patient and informed, but they need to be mollified with enough tangible wins that are sufficiently understood to be building blocks in the context of the big picture.

    Which goes to a main point of this post. Republicans (and conservatives) need to radically upgrade their competitiveness in the critical Narrative contest for the zeitgeist of the activist game, where narrative is elective truth while the actual truth is just a narrative that must be competed for like any other in the arena.

  18. Anyone aware of the 2013 meeting with Luis Gutierrez and their mutual endorsement of open borders? Has Paul Ryan learned anything since grade school? I happened to run into his grade school teacher in Janesville a few years ago. Her nickname for him was Eddie Haskell. Trump is probably too scary for Ryan to comprehend.

  19. McHenrybob:

    I see the Breitbart/Conservativetreehouse forces have arrived to peddle their usual conspiracy theories about Ryan and Gutierrez. Yes, I read about all the “secret plots.” And here you come, no doubt knowing everything about Ryan’s school teacher! I bet you went to kindergarten with him, too, and can tell us all the dirt on that.

    This is exactly what I mean about the right trying to destroy Ryan. Funny thing how they use the techniques that we’ve become so familiar with from the left. If you’re even on the right at all–

    Why don’t you give us a refresher course in Romney’s dog on the roof and teasing someone in prep school, too?

    I already said in that post that I’m assuming Ryan supported the Gang of 8 bill, by the way, although we don’t have much on record about it because he’s in the House and it never came to that.

    Last time you were here commenting was to try to take down Carly Fiorina way past the time she was already out of the running. Is attacking Republicans your specialty? Actually, your Fiorina comment was around the time Cruz was about to pick her as his VP, so your motive was probably to take down Cruz, come to think of it.

  20. The attacks on Ryan made by “conservatives” are irrational. Mr Ryan is the most conservative Speaker of the House in at least 60 years.

    ANY replacement of him will be substantially LESS conservative (Nancy Pelosi, anyone?).

    The budget deficit this year is less than half of what it was in the first three Obama years, where the appropriations were controlled by the Democrats. There is NO Obamacare, or Stimulus, or Dodd-Frank even being talked about.

    Mr Ryan has developed important long-term goals, working with a wide range of members of the House and the general public. He is one of the most intelligent and well-informed members of the Congress (nobody in the Obama administration comes anywhere near his knowledge).

  21. Ryan does not find djt scary in the way you imagine Mchenrybob, he and a host of others find the donald ‘scary’ in terms of his potential destruction of not only what I consider real conservatism, but even gope conservatism lite. Nominate the donald, Gozar the Keymaster, hushering in the reign of the Destructor, aka the Shrew Queen. The so called alt-right own this, welcome to permenant residence in mommy’s basement.

  22. I was a big Ryan fan in 2012. I soured on him due to immigration. There are paths forward which feature both 1) no legalization and 2) no systematic deportation. I believe that we are better off making no changes at all than making any changes which include a pathway to citizenship. Any compromise where restriction of immigration in exchange for a one time pathway for current illegals will never be respected by the establishment nor will the next wave of illegals consider it to have been the last chance. The compromise will only encourage the next wave.

  23. so why doesn’t talk about that, honestly the gope majority, talk as if they are in the minority, if you don’t like trump’s plan, propose one that works better,

  24. From Ryan’s website :

    “Fourth, we need to give people a chance to get right with the law. We should welcome anyone who is committed to America. But we should always uphold the rule of law–and be fair to those who followed it. To be clear, no amnesty should be provided”

    This means that he intends some sort of legalization. There will be some sort of penalty or payment which he will say makes it something other than amnesty. Fair enough, but it’s legalization and in my mind a mistake.

  25. more:

    “High-Tech Visas: … American employers worry they will have a shortage of high-skilled workers…”

    The shortage of high tech workers is largely a myth. American employers worry that they will have a shortage of workers willing to work for shrinking salaries.

    “…. But, to make sure American workers get a fair shot at these jobs, we should require sponsors of foreign workers to complete labor certifications to ensure that foreign workers are not displacing equally qualified American workers. ”

    They already have to complete certifications and they are largely false. Anyone think that the establishment will ever hold employers accountable?

    Look at this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU

  26. Look to the king/queen makers..

    Evening news features 4 times as much negative coverage of Trump than Clinton
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/20/evening-news-features-4-times-as-much-negative-cov/

    no sooner did that come out than other stories showing the opposite had to be written..

    so how did media and persuasion work on Ryan what did they show, focus on, ignore, or even take the public eye off of.

    the biggest thing i saw with the most effect was the threat to sue trump and no threat to sue obama for more egregious things (in the public that saw it that way)

    once the new taint of the establishment is there, then there is no saving you, people are that fed up.

    The media coverage of this Donald Trump-Paul Ryan summit is totally ridiculous
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/12/the-media-coverage-of-this-donald-trump-paul-ryan-summit-is-over-the-top/

    last sentence of the article:
    Either that, or there’s really nothing else happening in the world.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

    Ryan is out on both sides cause he didnt do what either side wanted, rspecially the elites that orchestrate the way things work… (and get the kind of effect thats in the first article as to how much time is on a candidate that then governs much of how you think you perceive someone! as well as the kinds of persuasion that is written about here. How to Un-Hypnotize a Rabid Anti-Trumper http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146157026376/how-to-un-hypnotize-a-rabid-anti-trumper )

  27. Sorry but I can’t buy the he’s really trying but it’s complicated… argument. I smell a rat and I realize that’s not proof. And if time proves otherwise, I’ll happily admit to being wrong about the man.

    Any Republican who supported the Gang of Eight bill, either directly or indirectly favors open borders. There’s not a Republican who doesn’t know what the Democrats are about when it comes to illegal immigration. Who doesn’t know that they’ll betray any promise, while working to undermine enforcement of any provision that seeks to lessen illegal immigration.

    I continue to strongly suspect that the GOPe intends to pursue Hispanic voters as a replacement for their increasingly disenfranchised conservative base. And I suspect that Ryan is actively involved in that effort.

  28. My dream policy: 1.Close the borders. Stout walls at key areas, drones, and as many border control agents as necessary. Shoot to kill any who manage to get across. Yes, that is not PC, but invaders, without regard to age or sex, are invaders. Shoot 1000 to discourage 1,000,000. 2. A six month peiod for illegals already here to come forward.and undergo In depth background checks. If illegals have no criminal record, have not received any form of welfare, they can stay and apply for green cards but are forever, including their children, never allowed to seek citizenship. 3. Any illegals who do not come out from the shadows during the 6 month grace period must face immediate deportation when detected and a death sentence if they are caught reentering. Tough love.

  29. Art,

    The evening news has a hit piece on Trump every night and never says anything directly negative about her. The only time negativity is directed at her is when they show a very brief clip of Trump criticizing her and, who would believe anything a racist says?

    It’s far worse than a 4 to 1 ratio.

  30. parker,

    Without regard to age? I can’t agree to killing children.

    Death sentence for reentering? Sure. Drones are fine too. I still say eliminating benefits and going after the employers is the way to self-deportation. Then build a wall where it makes sense.

  31. GB.

    Kill children? How many die by abortion? How many are raped/murdered everyday. IMO, anyone, without regard to age, attempts to enter the USA illrgally must be dealt with the harshest terms.

    My grandchilern require nothing lrss.

  32. Hi Neo–

    Don’t feel badly about not knowing about the bill to electrify Africa at U.S. Taxpayer expense; Nobody else does either. Here’s the link: US President Obama signs Africa electricity plan into law. On Feb 1 at 5:05 PM when very few congressmen were present, Mr. Royce (sitting in for Paul Ryan) moved to suspend the rules and pass the bill, which they did by “unanimous consent”. Have you ever watched how that works on CSPAN? The speaker says “I move to pass this bill by unanimous consent” and immediately bangs his gavel and the deed is done – even with an empty chamber. So where was Ryan…and why did he allow this bill to be brought to the floor?

    Now about the wind farms, read: These Two Massive Vietnam Deals Just Inked During President Obama’s Historic Visit Involve GE Technology. Now you might say that this is just a deal between a private company and Vietnam and we taxpayers aren’t paying anything, but you would wrong. See: Wind-energy sector gets $176 billion worth of crony capitalism

    Then, of course, there’s FDR’s Export-Import bank that Paul Ryan “rescued” by sticking it into the Highway Bill.

    There’s a pattern here and we “little people” aren’t in it. You would think that Ryan would throw the people a bone every so often just to keep us from getting surly. Take, for example, the “Pilot’s Bill of Rights 2” which would loosen some stupid and expensive FAA regulations that add nothing to safety. The House already passed it once several years ago; The Senate passed it twice, recently, and sent it back to the House, where Ryan has let it languish in committee. He had an opportunity to amend it to the Defense Appropriations bill that passed a couple days ago, but he didn’t. This silly game has been going on for years and years now; Almost everybody in the aviation community supports the bill, but Ryan won’t bring it to the floor or attach it to another bill. If I had to guess, I’d say he hasn’t yet figured out how to use it to funnel money to GE or some other major contributor.

    It’s clear to me that “We, the People” are always last on Ryan’s agenda; That’s why I don’t care for the man.

  33. parker,

    Two wrongs do not make a right. The intentional killing of children, for any reason is always an evil.

    neo,

    IMO, that is an example of Trump’s “shoot from the hip” inconsistency in what he advocates. Yes, those are indications of a man driven by gut reactions rather than principles and yes, that does disqualify him from the office he seeks.

    That said, I will assume he’s serious about illegal immigration until, through his actions he proves otherwise.

    It’s that or roll out the red carpet for Hillary.

  34. GB:

    “That said, I will assume he’s serious about illegal immigration until, through his actions he proves otherwise.”

    So you assume he is serious now but wasn’t then: Gang of 8, hiring practices in his FL resort. That would be the difference between actions and promises (suggestions)? Logical.

  35. OM,

    Trump bases his position on self-interest. Until his competitors have to forego the hiring of illegals, he’s not going to sacrifice his competitive position to a (from a business pov) ivory-tower ‘principle’.

    I suspect that Trump’s position on illegal immigration, Muslim migration and trade is based in ‘enlightened’ self-interest. As an American citizen, Trump sees all of them as currently composed, as placing him and America, at a competitive disadvantage.

    So, Trump is NOT against the hiring of illegals, he’s against uncontrolled illegal immigration.
    He’s against importing Muslims because he sees them as a population that in the aggregate is hostile to American foundational principles. He’s against trade policies that greatly favor foreign nations. He’s against a ‘service’ economy, bereft of a robust manufacturing sector.

    He’s against these things not out of principle but for pragmatic reasons. And that is why, despite his occasional forays into cognitive dysfunction and hypocrisy, I can assume that he will, in the end, always do what is in his best interest. But that is NOT simply selfishness or even ego driven motivation, Trump seeks leadership of his team i.e. America and that is exactly how I see him, he sees America and American interests as his ‘tribe/team’. To use a sports analogy, he’s fighting to be his team’s manager.

  36. P Ryan is a good example of someone who went to DC with good intentions, and then got face to face with the true nature of evil. It was more difficult than they had perhaps thought.

  37. Neo-
    Towards the end of the 2012 election, I started seeing a lot of people who loved Ryan’s “MATH!” type stuff suddenly seeming to realize “wait a minute, this guy isn’t just a’Catholic,’ he actually believes all this stuff!” and start flipping out.
    I think a lot of his prior supporters feel betrayed– not because he changed in any way, but because they found out that he wasn’t on board with a libertarian-lite angle.
    It’s sort of like when the “I f****ing love science” folks find out that a scientist believes that God guided evolution; even if it has nothing to do with his specialty, or if he believes it was done in such a way that there would be no “scientific” evidence, they’ll be rather vicious in their attacks on the “creationist.”

  38. And here’s another gift from Ryan, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act , which gives the EPA absolute control of everything that we use in our day-to-day lives. Only 3 republicans voted against this power grab. It’s H.R.2576 and the president just signed it. Unbelievable…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>