Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was supposed to be the only person capable of unifying the Republican party (especially the fractious House Republicans), and was portrayed as some sort of savior who had the power to fix the inherent problems and get things done, by showing the world a new Republican agenda for the future. "Regular order" would return to the House, all members would be listened to, and Republicans would unify around a budget rather than incessantly gumming up the works. Ryan was committed to showing Republicans could be the "party of ideas," which they would then turn into legislation and vote on before the election, as a shining centerpiece of Republicanism. Sure, all these bills would likely be vetoed (if they even stood a chance in the Senate), but that was immaterial, because the public would be able to see what Republicans would do if they ever managed to take the White House. The Republican candidate would have a ready-made platform on his (or her) first day in office, all tied up in a nice bow.

This hasn't exactly happened, and Ryan is now signaling that much of it will in fact not happen at all. Ryan is, to be blunt, just not living up to his star billing. He's currently engaged in a round of "lowering the bar" in the hopes that the public won't notice the cold reality that the House of Representatives is simply not going to get much of anything done this year. On most issues, it seems, they're not even going to try.

So far, Ryan has fallen far short of his goals, but few in the media have noticed (mostly since there's a wildly entertaining presidential race to distract them). Ryan's House just missed their first deadline for the budget, because the Tea Partiers among them are (as usual) balking at doing their basic job. This has pushed things out at least a month or two, which may eventually turn into not passing any budget framework bill at all this year. Puerto Rico faces a deadline at the end of this month (they're in the midst of a gigantic fiscal crisis), and the House was supposed to come up with a solution -- but it now seems like they'll miss this deadline as well. Other important legislation is also stalled and going nowhere fast. So far, it looks like Ryan being in charge is going to be no different than John Boehner trying to herd the Republican cats in the House -- nothing will get accomplished.

Politico recently noted that at least some of this stems from the rise of Donald Trump:

With the party base so unsettled, rank-and-file GOP members don’t want to do anything that could alienate pro-Trump voters back home. "Don't piss anyone off" has become the unofficial mantra for Republicans, which has led to paralysis.

That's being charitable. "Led" to paralysis? They didn't need to be led, they were already there! Politico also has some choice quotes on Ryan and the situation he faces, from unidentified House Republicans:

"I think Boehner would have listened to it for a little bit, given everybody a chance to chew on it and swallow it and spit it out, and then he would have just taken it to the damn floor," said one Republican on condition of anonymity, contrasting Ryan's style with Boehner's. "I think [Ryan] has underestimated the opposition to getting anything done."

Another Republican said the GOP Conference "is unwhippable and unleadable. Ryan is as talented as you can be: There's nobody better. But even he can't do anything. Who could?"

But what about that grand plan to roll out a fully-fleshed Republican agenda, to show the voters that Republicans are capable of planning for America's future? Well, it doesn't exactly lay in tatters, but it's fast approaching that status. The Washington Post just checked in on how the agenda project is going, and while the article downplays it, it's pretty obvious that the ambitions have been seriously scaled back from "we're going to pass our agenda" to a much more weak "we might put a few white papers out." I've added emphasis to the following, to point this out a bit better:

Republicans say the speaker's agenda project -- the product of several task forces and dozens of meetings among rank-and-file House members -- will provide specifics, and perhaps even draft legislation, on key issues of importance to conservatives, including health care, taxes and national security. Republicans have long promised an alternative to President Obama's Affordable Care Act, which they constantly bash but for which they have not produced a concrete replacement.

. . .

The agenda project has proceeded quietly but steadily behind closed doors since the effort was formally unveiled at a Republican policy retreat in January. The chairmen of the House standing committees were each tasked with developing policy documents in six areas: health care, taxes, national security, regulatory reform, poverty and reasserting Congress's constitutional authority.

Since then, each task force has opened the process to rank-and-file Republicans, who have been invited to contribute regardless of their committee assignments. By the time the final plans are unveiled, leadership aides said, Republicans will have gathered for at least 25 meetings.

The result, in McCarthy's telling, will be the most detailed set of policy plans released by House Republicans since retaking the majority more than five years ago. The health care plan, for instance, will put forth the first leadership-endorsed plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Some plans will take the form of actual draft legislation; other parts will resemble "white papers" detailing specific policies.

While McCarthy said the agenda will be comprised of detailed proposals, there remains the question of exactly how specific they will be in areas that could be politically treacherous.

During the interview, McCarthy suggested that at least some of the plans would be submitted to the Congressional Budget Office for a nonpartisan fiscal "scoring" or price tag. But an aide said afterward that those analyses are unlikely to be available before the plans are unveiled. And it is unlikely that major parts of the agenda will actually be brought up for a vote before November.

Got all of that? Ryan's no longer shooting for passing bills. From the lowball approach, it seems likely that none of his ideas will ever see a floor vote on the House -- certainly not before the election. Why is this? Because Republicans are terrified of what the C.B.O. will have to say about their plans -- even with the new "magic Republican math" they've been told to use. If the public ever found out exactly what the fiscal impact of these plans would be, they would recoil in horror and vote Republicans out of office en masse. That's the hidden admission in that article. I mean, seriously, they're going to "perhaps even draft legislation" on some of their ideas? That's it? That's the new goal? Because some of the ideas "could be politically treacherous"? Why would Republican ideas -- which, remember, were supposed to be presented to convince voters that GOP plans were the best -- be "politically treacherous" to Republicans and not (as one would assume) to Democrats? Maybe because these ideas would be wildly unpopular with the voters? That's really the only reason they would ever be "politically treacherous," right?

This turns Ryan's entire premise on its head. Ryan swore to everyone when he took office (and in several speeches since) that Republicans could indeed be the idea party, and had a political agenda that could be fully presented to the American people and passed by the House, to prove that they could govern and should be trusted with the White House. That was the core idea. Pass our agenda, and let the people decide. That's the idea that is approaching the status of lying on the floor in tatters.

By frantically lowering the bar, Ryan is all but admitting the following:

We can't even agree on the details among ourselves. Even when we do, we are downright frightened what the C.B.O. will say the impact of our agenda will be on the public. We certainly can't write all the details down in draft legislation, because then the Democrats will be able to point out the shortcomings and use these as a bludgeon on the campaign trail. We are terrified of this, and terrified of what the Trump voters will think, too. So there is just no way we are going to be honest about what we want to do to the country, and instead we're hoping that putting out some vague warm-and-fuzzy white papers with zero actual details (and lots of high-flown language about "freedom" and "small government") will be enough for us to make the claim (with a straight face) that we actually can agree on any sort of agenda whatsoever.

In other words, Paul Ryan is signaling that he will be nothing short of an abject failure as speaker. The House of Representatives has a two-year term. Granted, Ryan has not been in charge for all of the current term -- he had to be forced into the job when nobody could think of anyone else to replace the ousted John Boehner. Even so, that happened last year. Ryan had over a year to make good on his promise to roll out a fully-detailed Republican agenda for the future. It's April, and none of it so far exists. What does exist is Ryan already walking back his grand ambitions. Bills will now not be passed -- indeed, bills won't even be drafted. Instead, we're all supposed to bask in the glory of a handful of white papers. This is a bald admission that nothing is going to get done in the House, all year long. Oh, and that GOP Obamacare replacement bill that we've been waiting six or seven years to see won't actually appear this year, either. So sorry.

House Republicans, from Ryan on down, are caught in an ideological trap. They truly want to appear productive to the American public. The problem is, they know full well that if they submitted their agenda to non-partisan analysis, it would clearly show the steep costs to the American public. Tens of millions would probably lose health insurance, and that's just for starters. Huge amounts of largesse would be showered upon the one percent -- which is not exactly going to be popular in this particular election year. And that's before even contemplating (shudder) what the Republicans would do on subjects like "poverty" or "reasserting Congress's constitutional authority."

Paul Ryan knows full well (whatever he tells himself to the contrary, so he can sleep at night) that if the public were fully informed of what the Republicans plan is for the future, it would drastically increase the chances of him turning his gavel back over to Nancy Pelosi next year. The voters, were they fully aware of what Republicans wanted to do (and how much it would cost them personally), would probably vote for the other guys. This has always been why his grand scheme was doomed to fail, in fact -- Donald Trump and the Tea Partiers really share little blame at all.

My bold prediction is that this will not be the first time Ryan is forced to publicly roll back his goals for his vaunted agenda project. He started at: "We're going to pass a budget and pass our entire agenda," and he now stands at: "We're going to put out white papers, and maybe one or two of them will be drafted as actual legislation -- which we won't be voting on or even bothering with C.B.O. scoring on, of course." Later this year, this will (no doubt) be watered down even further, perhaps to: "We gave up on the white papers, and have put together this two-page list of bullet points which all sound pretty pie-in-the-sky."

What it all basically boils down to is: "We are completely incapable of doing our jobs, because if we did that then we likely wouldn't get re-elected." Will someone please remind me why taxpayers are still paying these guys' salaries? Their only re-election scheme now seems to be to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they refuse to let the public even know what they stand for. That's pretty pathetic. Ryan is a long way from living up to his billing, folks.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant