Report: Conservative House members urged Ryan to run for Speaker in 2010

By late 2010, his appeal was at a zenith among House Republicans. One by one, several conservative members privately approached Ryan and urged him to run for speaker in what would amount to a conservative coup against Boehner, the party’s leader and speaker-to-be. The dissidents included Flake, who quickly sensed that a quiet Ryan, long regarded as a leader in waiting, had no appetite for the added burdens that would accompany the speakership. “He told me that if he ever ran for speaker that he would have to do the whole fundraising circuit for the party and that would put him away from his family more,” Flake recalls. “Some guys with no real chance say that kind of stuff all the time to the press. But when Ryan said it to me alone, I believed it — because I think he could’ve won and been speaker.”

Part of Flake’s confidence in Ryan’s chances had stemmed from his read of young House Republicans, many of whom view Ryan as a mentor. “Paul has come in and spent a lot of time with our [Republican] class, getting us up to speed,” Sean Duffy, a freshman congressman and fellow GOP member of Wisconsin’s delegation, said last year. “He lays out the fiscal picture and doesn’t try to oversell the Roadmap. There’s a lot of trust there. If I see an issue as a problem, I ask him, ‘What do you see as a solution?’ ”

Ryan’s subtle sway over his young House acolytes has never been lost on Boehner and others in the Republican leadership, especially in behind-the-scenes battles. Early last year, Ryan joined forces with Flake to try to forcean important rules change at a private meeting of the House Republican conference. Flake, a new member of the House Appropriations Committee, had proposed a radical departure from the old ways of the committee. He called on his fellow party members to amend the committee’s rules so that any spending cuts approved would be placed into a “lockbox,” where the savings couldn’t be spent by the committee on other programs without the approval of the full House. After politely listening, Boehner urged members to reject the amendment, insisting it would unwisely tie the hands of Appropriation committee members, who roundly opposed it.

As the private debate wore on, Ryan prepared to address the group. His stature on fiscal matters guaranteed, at the very least, that more members would carefully listen to the argument on the amendment’s behalf, Flake thought. But before Ryan could speak, Boehner rose and called for a vote on the amendment, which went down to defeat. Flake viewed Boehner’s maneuver as a tacit recognition of Ryan’s burgeoning influence in the party, and the worry it sometimes sparked.