But... Ryan just had a big loss. As I wrote yesterday, Ryan got rolled on the farm bill, and that kind of thing is rare. That's a show of weakness. Discharge petitions fail generally because majority party members are afraid that if they sign the petition, they face punishment. This is all based on the perception of party strength. Party strength, then, is sort of circular. Convince people that you have strength, they back down, and you win, thereby exhibiting strength.
By failing, by getting rolled, Ryan demonstrated lack of strength. To be sure, this was about a failure to count votes rather than a failure to impose discipline. What Ryan should have done was get Scalise to do a proper vote count, realize that he didn't have the support for the bill, and pull the bill from the floor. That's different from threatening punishment for those who voted no, and having those threats fail. It still makes him look weak, though.
And that could undercut his ability to prevent vacillating Republicans from signing the immigration discharge petition.
I'm updating my assessment of the chances of that discharge petition making it through. It won't matter, policy-wise, because even if it got through the Senate, Trump would veto it, but Ryan's farm bill failure could embolden enough Republicans to get that discharge petition over that hurdle.
Maybe? It's... could it? We don't really have obvious precedent here, or at least obvious to me. Could failure produce failure on discharge petitions? I'm just spitballing here.