Ryan's rapid fade speaks to what appears to be a shift in the Republican Party. Paul Ryan's disappearing act

He seems to have fallen entirely off the radar of early state Republicans. Democrats bring up his name with more zeal than do people in his own party. And his footprint at the Conservative Political Action Conference was so faint that his being an afterthought was itself an afterthought.

What the heck has happened to Paul Ryan?


Just months removed from being on the GOP ticket, he has faded from the national political conversation in a way that’s remarkable for a politician possessed with youth, fame and ambition.

( Also on POLITICO: GOP sees cash opportunity in gay marriage shift)

This is partly by his choosing. Ryan, 43, has purposefully sought not to fan the 2016 flames and instead plunged headlong back into his work in the House. He’s been the anti-Palin: returning to his previous job with gusto and gladly immersing himself in the minutiae of governing.

And, friends say, the House Budget Committee chairman has been quite taken with the amount of influence he enjoys in the GOP conference well beyond his committee purview. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has effectively made Ryan his tea party whisperer, and his votes are watched closely by establishment and conservative House Republicans alike.

“He’s really now wearing two hats,” said former GOP Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.). “He’s chairman of a committee, but he’s also an unelected member of the leadership.”

( PHOTOS: Paul Ryan through the years)

Sources close to Ryan caution that his congressional focus at the moment ought not be confused with lack of interest in 2016 but seen, rather, in the context of somebody with a demanding day job.

“He knows he has a really big job right now,” added Dan Senor, a close Ryan friend who advised him on last year’s campaign.

Yet as Ryan’s power inside the Capitol has grown since his return earlier this year, his standing outside the building has diminished.

( Also on POLITICO: Rubio, Paul fight for GOP future)

Last year’s It Boy of the graying Republican Party has been bigfooted by the GOP’s new twin heartthrobs, Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

In conversations with scores of Republicans in Washington and beyond, it’s striking how little organic support or even interest there is for a Ryan presidential bid so soon after Mitt Romney elevated the Wisconsin wonk to the highest levels of national political stardom. Open-ended questions about who is drawing early attention don’t even include a pro forma mention of last year’s popular vice presidential nominee.

Buzz, or a lack of it, in the spring of 2013 about a primary three years away can be easily dismissed as irrelevant. And Ryan allies note that he remains well liked in the party and has been vetted and tested far more than most of the other potential candidates.

( PHOTOS: Republicans, 2016 contenders)

But his rapid fade speaks to what appears to be a shift in both the Republican Party and the broader political culture.

The GOP has for decades operated according to the rules of a sort of political primogeniture, nominating the next heir in line for the presidency every election cycle the contest is open. Primaries haven’t always held precisely to this tradition, but that somebody as popular within the party as Ryan is already being overshadowed suggests Republicans are changing in other important ways.

After nominating two presidential hopefuls with extensive records but little in the way of political sex appeal, the party seems determined to find its own Barack Obama. That is, a politician who may enjoy in celebrity and pizzazz what he lacks in experience. Obama’s appeal was in no small part anchored in his race, and finding a nominee who isn’t another white guy is certainly an imperative for some Republicans. But what hurts Ryan’s prospects isn’t merely that he’s white — it’s that he’s vanilla.

The political culture increasingly mirrors the country’s broader culture, and if you can’t keep somebody’s attention for longer than 10 seconds on YouTube you’re going to have a hard time catching on. How else could New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (elected in 2009), Rubio and Paul (elected to Congress in 2010) have become sensations so quickly well beyond the borders of their states?

Ryan is actually hurt by having been on the ticket last year. Many Republican activists had heard of the smart young Wisconsin conservative but not actually seem him up close. And when they did, well, it didn’t send their pulses racing.

“He fell flat out here,” said Sam Clovis, a conservative talk radio show host in northwest Iowa. “He just didn’t measure up to the hype.”

And without the sort of sizzle that will light up grass-roots voters and donors — or the built-in infrastructure Ryan lacks — it could be difficult to find the cash to launch a presidential bid.

“You cannot raise money if you don’t have sex appeal,” said former South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson.

Though it may fade with time as he re-establishes his identity and Romney disappears, Ryan still has the stink of 2012 on him.

“He lost his home state,” said Dawson of Ryan’s Wisconsin. “Jeb Bush would never have lost his home state.”

Republicans could return to form by 2016 and choose the solid over the scintillating.

What isn’t likely to dissipate with time, though, is the taint on Ryan that comes with being a full-fledged congressional insider. There’s a growing desire on the part of Republicans to move away from the Washington wing of the party and the sort of austerity politics with which the congressional GOP has come to be defined.

Look at the remarks from individuals like Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and even Romney’s remarks at CPAC: They all are nudging Republicans away from their spending fixation toward a growth orientation their governors personify.

“We must not become the party of austerity,” says Jindal in his speeches. “We must become the party of growth.”

One could dismiss such pleas from governors, former governors and potential presidential hopefuls as self-serving. But it isn’t just them — it’s happening in Congress, too. Consider House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s recent effort at Republican rebranding, focusing on aspirational issues like education, and Rubio’s moves on immigration and college affordability.

Ryan’s admirers say it’s unfair to suggest he’s merely a green eyeshade Republican. After all, his political mentor was supply-sider and congenital optimist Jack Kemp, and when Ryan bumped up against Romney’s high command during the campaign it was over the congressman’s desire to speak more to poor voters about how conservative policies could affect their lives.

But Ryan has become so identified with his budget plan it could be hard for him to shed the austerity label.

That’s partly because Democrats remain fixated with using the Ryan budget to brand the GOP as, to use the term the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes coined in a piece over the weekend, “the negative party” — intent on inflicting cuts, pain and belt-tightening.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, for example, invoked Ryan at a Wall Street Journal breakfast with reporters last week to make a historically loaded comparison.

“If you played out the Paul Ryan budget on domestic discretionary spending and took from his calculations Social Security and a couple of the entitlement programs, you would end up with a level of domestic spending near 4 percent of revenue, which goes back to the days of Herbert Hoover,” said Durbin, crediting Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for the projection.

Even if Ryan could remake himself as something other than the GOP’s go-to budgeteer, he’ll face the more inherent difficulties that come with launching a presidential bid from Congress. Especially now that he’s become more of a player with the House leadership, he’s confronting hard choices that could affect his political future. Look no further than the fiscal cliff compromise, a bill that let some income tax rates rise and that he supported even as many conservatives were casting “no” votes.

“Compare his vote on that to Rubio’s vote,” said one Ryan ally. “Rubio gave a floor speech against it and cast a vote. It was to no consequence. Who cares? Then look at Paul’s vote: He gave cover for a lot of House Republicans.”

“He made it a lot easier for those of us who voted the same way,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “You go home and tell Republicans you voted like Paul Ryan, and they say, ‘Gee , that must have been the right thing to do.’”

Similarly freighted votes will take place in the months ahead on issues like the debt ceiling and perhaps even a fiscal grand bargain as the two parties grapple with the tax and spending issues that have consumed Washington in the past three years.

“Congress is dysfunctional, these guys have to vote for garbage,” said longtime Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett, predicting flatly that the next Republican nominee will be a governor. “Ryan is going to suffer from the same thing as everybody else who wants to run from Washington.”

Even Ryan’s allies in the House acknowledge that the deals that must be cut and votes that have to be stomached don’t offer much of a platform from which to mount a White House campaign.

“It’s always hard to run from here, but particular if you’re a constructive personality like Paul is,” said Cole, who sits on the Budget Committee, adding: “Everything that we accomplish up here in the next four years is going to involve some element of compromise.”

While Ryan is pursuing the opposite course from that of Sarah Palin after her defeat, his tactics nevertheless prompt the same question: Does he really want to run?

The Alaskan’s decision to abruptly quit her job as governor before completing a single term indicated that she was more interested in becoming a political personality than in running for office. And many in Ryan’s orbit think his move back to the House and vote for the fiscal cliff deal suggest a future atop the Ways and Means Committee or as speaker. An indicator could come within the next year: Does he choose to run for reelection? Not even his biggest advocates think he could run for president from Ways and Means or as speaker.

One Republican who has spoken with him in recent weeks said Ryan makes clear in private that he wants to keep the 2016 option open. But his actions don’t always seem to back that up.

Always more of a policy guy than a pol, Ryan has essentially no political infrastructure. He is his own strategist.

And when Republicans reach out with offers of help, he or his small circle show little interest in taking them up on their outreach.

One well-connected early state Republican recalled running into some Republicans in Ryan’s orbit after the election.

“I said I’d love to be helpful to Paul, anything I can do let me know,” said this Republican.

The response?

“Crickets.”

Another Republican nudged Ryan to lay down a marker at his CPAC speech and suggested he enlist the speechwriters who helped craft his convention speech last summer.

If he did, it wasn’t noticeable. Ryan’s appearance at the conference was completely overshadowed by those of Rubio, Paul and to a lesser degree Romney, who made his first public appearance since the election at the annual gathering earlier this month.

“I didn’t even know when Paul was speaking,” said a Republican who wants to be helpful to Ryan but isn’t sure Ryan’s interested in being helped. “Either he doesn’t really have an interest at this stage so he’s stopping it from above or his team just doesn’t really know how to execute.”

A third Republican sympathetic to Ryan fretted that the congressman’s inaction was tantamount to making a decision not to run.

“I think he is failing to take advantage of the fact that he met every rich Republican in America last year,” said this Republican. “Paul is engaging on a policy level, but he’s not doing anything politically. I think he’s missing opportunities. If he thinks it’ll all come his way, he’s going to find out it’s too late.”

In fairness, Ryan has not receded entirely from the political scene. He gave a headline-grabbing speech a month after the election at a dinner in honor of Kemp and has spoken at both CPAC and a National Review Institute conference earlier in the year.

To less fanfare, he also quietly made fundraising trips to California and Texas in recent weeks.

Sources say Ryan is also considering broadening his team to include fundraising professionals tied to Romney’s network.

One friend said to watch Ryan’s actions more closely this summer, when (and if) Congress gets through with its short-term fiscal responsibilities.

But many of his associates speculate that he doesn’t need to be president to be fulfilled.

“I’ve known Paul for 15 years, and I’ve seen him work as both a staffer and a member, and Paul cares about ideas and wants to make sure the party stands for the right ideas,” said Matt Schlapp, a GOP lobbyist who was a Hill aide alongside Ryan in the 1990s. “The struggle that somebody of his talent faces is what’s the best way to have an impact on the ideas he cares about? People who enjoy serving in Congress don’t always think you have to move to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue to have an impact.”