Sorry for the shameful request for love, but I really want people to read this.
In 2011 Paul Ryan was propelled into the Republican House leadership as Chairman of the House Budget Committee. His path was very similar to the one that John Kasich had once taken: the leaders loved him and his ideas, so after 12 years in Congress he was allowed to leapfrog more senior members.
Ryan immediately came out with a bunch of huge ideas. They would have completely transformed America. And the voters hated every last one of them. For example, he wanted to cut and privatize medicare right after an election that was largely won because the GOP portrayed themselves as the defenders of traditional medicare from Obamacare incursions.
The same thing happened to Kasich in 1995. The American people overwhelmingly rejected his budget and tax cuts, by an even wider margin (in the polls) than they rejected the GOP budget proposals under Obama. And he shut down the government in order to blackmail them into agreeing to his unpopular policies. (Clinton made it clear that if need be he would let the government shutdown last all the way through the election, but he wouldn't give in to the Republicans' demands.)
Ryan's ideas torpedoed the Republican Party in 2011. The American people quickly regretted having voted for them. Never-the-less, the GOP used their position of power to threaten a debt default and get Obama to agree to the sequester. But the polls showed that the Republican Congress was hated and not at all likely to be returned to the majority after the next election. Even many Republicans, in early to mid 2011, acknowledged that the House would almost certainly be lost in November 2012....if not for redistricting.
Boy was that ever the case. The aftermath of the 2010 Census gave us the gerrymandering to end all gerrymanders. In 2012 the Republicans lost the popular vote for the House, by a decent margin, and yet they won the House, by a decent margin. In some states they got a minority of the vote, but an overwhelming majority of the seats.
The effect of this gerrymandering was tremendous...even historic. Unlike in 1995-96, when Dole, Gingrich and Kasich had to back down, out of fear that they would get crushed in the next election, the current GOP Congress had no such fear. They had made certain that they almost certainly couldn't lose, even if they lacked the support of the American people.
This is what led to the current situation affecting John Boehner and the Republican caucus. The debate that they have been having in recent years is not really over policy. It is not really about Boehner and McCarthy, let alone Paul Ryan, not being conservatives. It is about whether or not to threaten the American people with a government shutdown and/or a debt default unless they acquiesce to Republican policy demands.
Essentially, presidential elections would become meaningless, and instead we would decide policy based on state legislative and gubernatorial elections in the census year, and how they affect redistricting for the next 10 years. Barack Obama could win an election based on certain policy positions and the GOP could demand that he instead pass their policies and repeal his--or they would open the gates of Hell on the American people. It would start with Obamacare--and then move on to the privatizing of Social Security. Each budget and each debt ceiling increase would yield more demands for more concessions.
This is what the Freedom Caucus, hard right Republicans are demanding. This is their big dispute with John Boener, and why they don't want him to be Speaker, to the point of even voting against him on the House floor (one considered the ultimate party-line vote). They are debating how to handle the power they gave themselves when they abrogated democracy through the redistricting process.
Paul Ryan is believed to be the only man who can win their support without signing on to their signature issue--extreme blackmail attempts against the American people. When they say that he is the only man who can unite the party, what they mean is that he is the only man who the ultra-extremists will vote for, even if he won't promise a government shutdown or debt default.
The great irony is that the radical redistricting which made this situation possible was created in order to limit the damage caused by Paul Ryan's policy proposals. He is the one who torpedoed the Republican Congress's favorability almost immediately after they came to power. And that is what made it so important to gerrymander the House to an insane and unprecedented degree. And that is what created the group of lawmakers who won't vote for their own party's Speaker-candidate on the House floor unless they promise to burn the country down if they are not allowed to govern it, with or without electoral victories and a mandate from the people. Apparently, giving them Paul Ryan is the compromise....he's their concession prize.
Then again...maybe the irony here is more limited than I am saying. In truth, the Republicans were always going to super- gerrymander the House. Their contempt for democracy is just that strong.
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