Riding The Tiger

Is the Freedom Caucus (with a lot of help from Free Staters) about to show Governor Ayotte who runs the NHGOP?

Before today’s piece, a few quick hits:

• This Tuesday, June 24th, at 6:30pm, I’ll be hosting a live, online premier exclusive event for paid subscribers and those who have registered for our postponed “Rebuild & Rise” Summit. It’s called “Ideational Power: What Democrats Can Learn From the NRA”. I’ll take your questions and comments live. If you are already a paid subscriber or registrant for the R&R Summit, you’ll get a special link for the event early next week. If you would like to watch this event, with all new material about how the NRA became, pound-for-pound, the most effective advocacy organization in America, please become a paid subscriber this weekend. It’s only $8/month, or $80/year, and helps me support all the work I’m doing on this Substack and the associated podcasts. Thank you!

• I was interviewed as part of a Boston Globe story this past Thursday about the potential impact of Trump’s Canadian tariffs on New Hampshire’s summer economy. Gov. Ayotte “is holding her breath and hoping for the best”, and I was quoted multiple times in the piece. As the son of French-Canadian immigrants, a dual citizen myself, and having two daughters attending Canadian universities, this story really hits home for me, and I hope you’ll read it.

Now, today’s piece. Is what happened to Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and other national “Establishment” Republicans about to happen to Governor Ayotte, courtesy of Free Staters and the Freedom Caucus?

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There is a Chinese proverb that says, “He who rides the tiger finds it hard to get off.” It has a few related meanings, one of which is that, once you decide to go down a path that is potentially dangerous, it can be very difficult to extricate yourself from the situation.

The MAGA Tiger

Can you name the last two Republican vice presidential nominees before current Vice President J.D. Vance? It may take you a surprisingly long time to recall, so I’ll save you the time: Mike Pence and Paul Ryan.

Both supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 GOP presidential primary process during key primaries in their home states of Wisconsin (which was probably the high point of Cruz’s campaign, and gave never-Trumpers brief hope in 2016) and Indiana (which was Cruz’s last stand before suspending his campaign after losing to Trump). Neither Ryan nor Pence ever projected great enthusiasm for Cruz, who is famously difficult to like, but they both saw candidate Trump as antithetical to the Reagan Era conservative movement both held close to their chest.

Pence was a conservative radio talk show host before running for congress, a direct disciple of the gospel of Reagan. In fact, when he ran for president in 2024 (remember that?), he pitched himself explicitly in the mold of Reagan.

Paul Ryan may have had an even more direct connection to Reagan’s legacy. Ryan was hired at 23 years old by former Rep. Jack Kemp to work for his think tank. Ryan, once said, “Jack is the reason I ran for Congress…I was motivated by Ronald Reagan, but inspired by Jack Kemp.” Kemp, was once seen as perhaps the closest ally in Congress to President Reagan, and himself was the 1996 vice presidential nominee.

By 2012, Ryan was Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick, and Pence was governor of Indiana. By early 2017, Mike Pence was Vice President, and Ryan was Speaker of the House. They were two of most important people tasked with the job of carrying the water for President Trump and the MAGA movement.

Neither man was MAGA, far from it; both had roundly criticized Trump’s policies and character. Both were portrayed in the media as key GOP leaders who would try to get the party through this period - happy that Trump had somehow stumbled into the presidency and created a GOP trifecta, and confident that if they simply let Trump say crazy shit and nominate conservative judges, they and other serious Republicans would focus on deregulation and tax cuts. You know, the Reagan stuff.

Of course, this is not what happened.

Paul Ryan is in his mid-50s, and should probably be one of the leading candidates for president in 2028 (if not president already). The 2024 RNC Convention was in Milwaukee, about a 75-minute drive from Paul Ryan’s home. Ryan did not speak at the convention.

Mike Pence was Donald Trump’s Vice President. He did not attend the 2024 RNC Convention - though, to be fair, some of Trump’s supporters were looking for him as they threatened to lynch him less than four years earlier.

These two men, and many others like them, thought they could ride the MAGA tiger, get the Reagan-era policies they wanted, enjoy the governing trifecta they helped achieve…and then discard the parts they didn’t like. It turns out, when they tried to ride the MAGA tiger, they found it impossible to dismount the tiger. MAGA runs the GOP, and either you get with the program (Vance, Rubio), get kicked out (Ryan, Pence), or retire before they kick you out (Romney, McConnell). It’s like Simon & Garfunkel sang decades ago:

I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest, hmm

The Free State Tiger?

The NHGOP comfortably controls the entire governing process in 2025 (and has, for much of the last decade): A ~45-seat House majority, a 16-8 Senate majority, four of the five Executive Council seats, and Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who comfortably won in 2024.

Despite this, the state’s budget for the next two years is due by the end of the month (the next fiscal year begins on July 1st), and the Republicans are having trouble getting on the same page.