One of the more enjoyable reads in the election post-mortem was the New York Times's "How the House fell." The article lays out the striking contrast between how the GOP's divided caucus helped seal their own defeat while a hyper-disciplined Democratic caucus worked in unison to triumph.
But let's focus on the Republican side of the equation in this post, and come back to the Democrats in another. What's clear from the Times' reporting is that while Donald Trump drove the GOP messaging into the ground, the House Speaker Paul Ryan’s abysmal management skills spurred an exodus of members that set Republicans up for near-certain failure.
It all began with Ryan's choice to go after the purely partisan goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act as the GOP’s first experiment in unilateral control. Not only was the legislation not a sure thing, it immediately split the caucus between the hardliners and the "moderates" on an issue that is notoriously complicated and not even remotely in the GOP's wheelhouse. The moderate-conservative fissures deepened with the tax bill, even though Republicans actually succeeded in getting that to Trump's desk. Ryan also stepped all over the toes of the GOP lawmakers chairing House committees. The combination of not building consensus amid his caucus along with micromanaging his committee chairs had disastrous results.
The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. [Ed] Royce held a quickly diversifying Orange County seat that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 even as it re-elected him. But he told colleagues that he bitterly resented the fruitless, politically damaging health care debate, and announced his retirement in a statement that took the N.R.C.C. by surprise.
Within weeks, Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, followed suit. Though he had pledged to seek re-election, Mr. Frelinghuysen was incensed over the way Mr. Ryan treated him during the tax overhaul debate — the speaker, Mr. Frelinghuysen told associates, had threatened to eject him from his chairmanship.
On Tuesday, Frelinghuysen’s seat, NJ-11, turned blue. Meanwhile, ballots are still being counted for Royce’s seat, CA-39.
But just imagine if instead of starting with health care, Ryan had begun with infrastructure and maybe even gotten some Democratic buy-in that made them partially responsible for the GOP’s legislative agenda. Additionally, imagine if instead of pounding out these bills within his insular inner circle, Ryan had actually sought input, forged some consensus, and given more Republicans some ownership over the process.
Because that didn’t happen, fully 40 GOP House members were already heading for the exits by last spring. And then, after personally spurring the exodus, Ryan announced his own exit, making him a lame duck speaker and fundraiser for the remainder of the year.
While he promised to keep raising money for fellow Republicans, Mr. Ryan’s contributions to the party would steadily decline; in the last fund-raising quarter of the campaign, his political committee transferred a paltry $1.4 million to the N.R.C.C., less than some first-time Democratic candidates raised for themselves.
Just to put a point on it: Ryan decimated his caucus by triggering an epic number of retirements and then left the remaining members to clean up his mess, even as he became a lead weight on their efforts. Thanks for that master class in failed leadership.
Remember when Ryan was going to save the Republican caucus after John Boehner's retirement? Welp, he drove a stake through it.