If Not Paul Ryan, Then Who?

If not Paul Ry­an, then who?

That’s the ques­tion House Re­pub­lic­ans are once again ask­ing them­selves as they pre­pare to head in­to an ugly and dif­fi­cult lead­er­ship elec­tion fol­low­ing an equally ugly and dif­fi­cult pres­id­en­tial cam­paign.

The fact that the ques­tion has no clear an­swer is per­haps the single strongest sig­nal that the sit­ting speak­er, who has come un­der friendly fire since dis­tan­cing him­self from GOP pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee Don­ald Trump, will con­tin­ue to lead the House Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence next year des­pite an in­tense me­dia fo­cus on the idea that con­ser­vat­ives might oust him.

“This is go­ing to take a while to sort it­self out,” said one lead­er­ship-aligned House Re­pub­lic­an, speak­ing on back­ground to dis­cuss in­tern­al con­fer­ence dy­nam­ics. “That said, hope­fully cool­er heads pre­vail and we just coast this in­to the har­bor, be­cause I see no good op­tions past Paul.”

After then-Speak­er John Boehner ab­ruptly an­nounced his resig­na­tion in Septem­ber 2015, Ry­an be­came the be­grudging com­prom­ise choice to lead the con­fer­ence. He was the only choice with the na­tion­al pro­file to con­test a Demo­crat­ic pres­id­ent and with the cre­den­tials to win sup­port across the es­tab­lish­ment-con­ser­vat­ive di­vide that has cleaved the Re­pub­lic­an Party.

In con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers, names like Fin­an­cial Ser­vices Com­mit­tee Chair­man Jeb Hensarling or Budget Com­mit­tee Chair­man Tom Price came up as po­ten­tial re­place­ments for Ry­an with the same cre­den­tials to win votes across the GOP ideo­lo­gic­al di­vide. But the two chair­men are among Ry­an’s closest friends and ad­visers, so much so that Price even re­ferred to the three as “kindred souls.” It would be dif­fi­cult to en­vi­sion a scen­ario in which one of the two chal­lenges Ry­an, though per­haps one of them could run if Ry­an de­cides to step aside.

Oth­er con­fer­ence lead­ers would have a hard time win­ning broad sup­port. Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Kev­in Mc­Carthy tried to gain sup­port for the speak­er­ship after Boehner resigned, and al­though he is gen­er­ally liked, his ef­fort failed—in part be­cause he’s seen as more mod­er­ate and less ar­tic­u­late than Ry­an. Ma­jor­ity Whip Steve Scal­ise, mean­while, would be a con­tro­ver­sial choice, hav­ing ad­mit­ted giv­ing a speech to a white-su­prem­acist group years be­fore he came to Con­gress. Re­pub­lic­an Con­fer­ence Chair­wo­man Cathy Mc­Mor­ris Rodgers has shown no signs of fur­ther lead­er­ship am­bi­tion, hav­ing de­clined to run for whip when she had the chance.

Else­where in the con­fer­ence, mem­bers like Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Re­form Chair­man Jason Chaf­fetz and Rep. Daniel Web­ster have offered them­selves up as com­prom­ise can­did­ates in the past, but neither was able to get more than a hand­ful of mem­bers, if that, to sup­port their can­did­a­cies. Web­ster has gone back to be­ing a back­bench­er, and Chaf­fetz has said he will be turn­ing his at­ten­tion to in­vest­ig­at­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton next year, should she win the pres­id­en­tial elec­tion.

Fox News host Sean Han­nity, who is close to Trump, has said he would like to see House Free­dom Caucus mem­bers Jim Jordan or Mark Mead­ows, or fel­low anti­es­tab­lish­ment Rep. Louie Gohmert chal­lenge Ry­an. But most mem­bers in­ter­viewed con­ceded that any Free­dom Caucus mem­ber would find a hard time gain­ing sup­port from mem­bers of the con­fer­ence writ large, many of whom view their tac­tics as an­arch­ic and coun­ter­pro­duct­ive.

Gohmert ran for speak­er last time around, gain­ing just three votes, in­clud­ing his own. Jordan has said re­peatedly he has no in­terest in be­ing speak­er, pre­fer­ring to work on the fringes to push lead­er­ship right­ward. Mead­ows, mean­while, said that neither he nor Jordan plan to run for the con­fer­ence’s top po­s­i­tion.

“I know that neither of us have any plans,” Mead­ows said.

Still, without even a full term un­der his belt and without a chal­lenger, Ry­an is be­ing tar­geted by some mem­bers. On is­sues like trade, im­mig­ra­tion re­form, and Trump’s char­ac­ter, Ry­an has be­come es­tranged from the nom­in­ee and his pop­u­list base. With Trump down in the polls, even sources close to Ry­an con­cede that mem­bers will likely be un­der pres­sure to vote against him for speak­er as re­tri­bu­tion for not fully sup­port­ing Trump.

That said, Ry­an spokes­wo­man Ash­Lee Strong noted the speak­er is keep­ing his eye on the elec­tions at hand for the time be­ing.

“Speak­er Ry­an has worked hard to uni­fy mem­bers be­hind con­ser­vat­ive ideas, but his only fo­cus un­til Nov. 8th is de­feat­ing Demo­crats and pro­tect­ing the House Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity,” Strong said.

Ry­an’s chal­lenge in re­tain­ing the speak­er­ship is math­em­at­ic­al: Al­though he has the sup­port of prob­ably more than 200 mem­bers, the speak­er must be elec­ted by the whole House in Janu­ary, mean­ing he needs 218 votes to win. The House ma­jor­ity could be trimmed to as few as five seats next year. Last elec­tion, nine mem­bers voted against Ry­an, and he was more pop­u­lar then than he is now. If the Re­pub­lic­an ma­jor­ity is any­where close to 10 seats, Ry­an could have a hard time reach­ing the threshold.

There is also a lead­er­ship elec­tion in mid-Novem­ber, but Ry­an needs only a simple ma­jor­ity of 115th Con­gress Re­pub­lic­ans—per­haps as few as 110, de­pend­ing on the elec­tion res­ults— to win, a feat he will eas­ily achieve. Still, Rep. Dave Brat, who voted against Ry­an last year, said he would like to see those elec­tions post­poned so Re­pub­lic­ans can re­as­sess their op­tions after what looks to be a tu­mul­tu­ous elec­tion and give oth­er can­did­ates time to come for­ward. As an ad­ded bo­nus, po­ten­tial can­did­ates could be judged on wheth­er and how they pass le­gis­la­tion dur­ing the lame-duck ses­sion.

“The way it’s mani­fest­ing it­self is the broad­er ques­tion. It’s not about tak­ing out a cer­tain in­di­vidu­al; it’s about, ‘What’s Paul Ry­an’s po­s­i­tion on trade? What’s the po­s­i­tion on reg­u­lar or­der? … What’s his po­s­i­tion on im­mig­ra­tion?’” Brat said. “We need clar­ity on what can­did­ates are run­ning for lead­er­ship. What po­s­i­tion is he run­ning on now in light of what the Amer­ic­an people just said, and are there any oth­er can­did­ates run­ning? I don’t know.”

In that sense, a vote against Ry­an would not be about Ry­an as an in­di­vidu­al, but about find­ing a speak­er who more aligns with the qual­it­ies the Re­pub­lic­an base has shown it wants in a lead­er throughout the pres­id­en­tial cycle. The prob­lem for Ry­an’s de­tract­ors is that, in the House at least, such a speak­er can­did­ate does not ex­ist.