Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisconsin) became House Speaker at the age of 45 on October 29, 2015 — exactly 10 years ago this Wednesday. Since then, the legislative landscape has experienced remarkable turnover. Roughly 60 percent of the current House Republican Conference never served alongside Ryan, who retired in January 2019.

Among the few House Republicans who served under Ryan and remain in Congress today, many have largely distanced themselves from that previous era. For example, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) was a freshman lawmaker in the spring of 2016 when she warmly introduced Ryan as a “happy warrior.” By 2020, however, Stefanik had reinvented herself as a Trump loyalist, eventually serving in party leadership and briefly being nominated to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s second term.

Unlike Stefanik, Ryan never fully embraced Trump and was not shy about voicing criticism. One notable instance was when the then-Speaker condemned Trump’s actions toward a judge of Mexican descent as a “textbook case of racism.” In contrast, Senator Ron Johnson cheers on most of Trump’s actions. Recently, Johnson applauded the president’s social media post featuring an AI-generated video portraying Trump as “King Trump” flying a plane that drops feces over American cities.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the Senate’s shift in attitude toward Trump than the changing views on trade deals. Ten years ago, 48 Republicans joined fewer than 15 Democrats in passing legislation aimed at enabling President Barack Obama to negotiate free trade agreements. That Senate is now largely gone, with almost half of those GOP senators no longer in office.

Currently, Republicans in the Senate have largely abandoned free trade principles. Just this Wednesday, only four Republican senators joined Democrats in opposing a portion of Trump’s tariff agenda — a stance that both President Reagan and Speaker Ryan likely would have vigorously opposed.

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Read more at msn.com

**Topics:** Government, News/Current Events, Politics/Elections
**Keywords:** Conservatism, Paul Ryan

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