US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6239

Paul D. Ryan unanimously won the nomination of his House Republican colleagues Tuesday to continue as speaker and serve as the chief legislative partner to President-elect Donald Trump.

“Welcome to the dawn of a new unified Republican government,” he told reporters ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

Ryan must now win a floor vote in January of all 435 House members. If about two dozen Republicans were to withhold their support, his election would be thrown in doubt.

Several Republicans made clear this week that although Trump’s victory may have eased the internal party tensions that threatened Ryan’s speakership before the election, it has not eliminated them entirely.

“I haven’t heard from him what he wants to change — what’s going to be different the next two years than the last two years?” said Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), a co-founder of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. “So far, I’m not hearing anything about changing the way we do business here in Washington, so I’m not ready to support him yet.”

Labrador is in a clear minority among House Republicans — Ryan (R-Wis.) enjoys broad support among the GOP rank-and-file — but his qualms reflect ongoing discomfort over how Ryan’s brand of Republican politics will meld with Trump’s. He was among a handful of members who said Tuesday they would still consider opposing Ryan then.

Beyond Ryan, other senior members of House leadership were all reelected on Tuesday. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.), Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.) and Policy Committee Chairman Luke Messer (Ind.) will remain in their jobs.

Rep. Steve Stivers (Ohio) is now at the helm of the National Republican Congressional Committee, beating Rep. Roger Williams (Tex.) for the job. Two junior leadership positions are set to be filled with new faces Tuesday after Conference Vice Chairman Lynn Jenkins (Kan.) and Conference Secretary Virginia Foxx (N.C.) declined to seek reelection to those posts.

Reps. Douglas A. Collins (Ga.) won the race for vice chairman over Rep. Bill Flores (Tex.), while Rep. Jason T. Smith (Mo.) is the only declared candidate for the secretary’s post.

That means, barring the surprise entry of another candidate, seven of the top eight House Republican leaders will be white men.

Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), who will be one of 21 Republican women in the House, said that was reason for concern.

“Just recently we realized, oh my gosh, we didn’t have enough women that were running,” she said. “We have great women as part of this conference. There are amazing women, and we should have more women in leadership.”

The tension is manifest in Trump’s plans for his White House. On Sunday, he chose Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, a longtime Ryan friend and ally from Wisconsin, as his chief of staff while also tapping a campaign official who has sought to undermine Ryan, Stephen K. Bannon, to a coequal position as chief strategist.

On significant matters such as trade policy, immigration reform and entitlement cuts, Ryan and Trump have crossed ways. And Trump’s enthusiastic backers in Congress bristled when Ryan distanced himself from his party’s presidential nominee — withholding his endorsement for several weeks after Trump clinched the nomination, for instance.

Ryan instead hit the campaign trail and the TV airwaves holding a copy of the “Better Way” policy agenda he developed — one that mostly ignored the areas where Trump’s agenda clashed with tenets of conservative doctrine. In media interviews since the election, he has pointed to the agenda as a blueprint for major legislation that can be enacted with a Republican White House and Congress working in tandem.

Trump and Ryan met last week on Capitol Hill and appeared before cameras together for the first time since the campaign began. Both men have said in the past week that action to repeal the Affordable Care Act, secure the southern U.S. border and cut taxes are among their shared priorities.

“We are on the same page,” Ryan said Tuesday, citing recent conversations with Vice President-elect Mike Pence. “We will be working hand in glove.”

On November 16 2016 06:31 zlefin wrote:

they didn't have to do that to be heard either.
and firing around nukes tends to cause a lot of fallout.

and despite bio's claims in the post after yours, they were in fact always heard. They do in fact have some representation, and their interests are and were looked after to a fair extent. I've yet to see any proof that that's not the case; rather than it being simply a lie they were told to get their votes to go one way or another.
But no matter how much people look after your interests, some things just aren't possible. and you have to recognize the difference between being heard and acted for, and the situation getting actively better in a generalized sense. sometimes that's simply not possible.