I'm to the point now where I expect a certain contingent to find fault with anything Ryan does, so I'm guessing we'll get griping here because this was not - for the most part - a red-meat speech attacking Obama (who wasn't even mentioned) and all the many scourges of liberalism. The bit about Democrats and Republicans praying for each other - and not for conversion - is probably not going to play too well with the people who want to spend every minute of every day waging ideological war.
But waging war isn't the purpose of an address like this. In a mere 13 minutes, Ryan's job upon his ascension to the Speaker's podium was to lay out his vision for how the House needs to work and what its priorities need to be going forward.
Here's the whole thing: (video below)
The part where he really lays out his priority comes when he's talking about the average American struggling and looking to Washington seeing nothing but chaos. There too, I'm sure the Ryan hater on the right would find fault because, hey, Americans who are struggling shouldn't be looking to Washington! They should be solving their own problems!
And yes. They should. But to the extent we're seeing economic crap like this, there's nothing wrong with wanting elected officials in Washington to simply do their jobs so they're not making it harder for you to do yours, and that's really what Ryan's talking about here.
When Ryan talked about returning to "regular order," the meaning of the statement was probably lost on most people who don't sit around obsessing over the nuanced details of the legislative process (in other words, sane people), but it basically means empowering committees to take the lead on crafting legislation rather than having House leadership dictate everything that happens. This was partially a move to help secure the support of the House Freedom Caucus, whose members understandably felt left out of the process by Boehner's heavy-handed approach to things. But I think it's also something Ryan, who earned his stripes as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, really believes is the right way to do things.
The greater challenge, of course, is for those committees and ultimately the full house to craft and pass legislation that doesn't just formalize Obama's agenda but actually changes anything for the better. And that was ultimately the problem people - myself included - had with Boehner. He thought a real fight with Obama was fruitless because Obama would take it straight to the brinkmanship of a government shutdown and the media would take Obama's side every time. That, Boehner thought, was a no-win proposition. But just bending over and saying, "Thank you sir, may I have another?" didn't accomplish anything either.
So we've seen that Ryan wants to run the House more the way it should be run, which is great for members of the House and will probably give Freedom Caucus members more of an opportunity to influence legislation (and hopefully less incentive to burn the place down). Now we have to see how he'll do standing up Obama's propagandists at the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.
He's much better suited for the task than his predecessor. I just hope he understands that's as much a part of his challenge as fixing what's wrong with the machinations of the House itself.
I'm to the point now where I expect a certain contingent to find fault with anything Ryan does, so I'm guessing we'll get griping here because this was not - for the most part - a red-meat speech attacking Obama (who wasn't even mentioned) and all the many scourges of liberalism. The bit about Democrats and Republicans praying for each other - and not for conversion - is probably not going to play too well with the people who want to spend every minute of every day waging ideological war.
