Ryan is only 48. Has he said what he plans to do? I can’t see the guy chaining himself to a corporate desk job or selling insurance.
What’s a young guy like that going to do for the next thirty years?
I don’t agree with many of his positions. But, I hate to see him go. We don’t have a lot of adults in politics these days. He was the rare bird that didn’t deal in hyperbole or stupid drama. He just quietly served the people of Wisconsin.
Imho losing Ryan is a real loss. There’s too many clowns in Washington and very few stand up guys. Ryan is one of them.
It doesn’t matter that I disagree with some of his positions. I much rather have a man of character serve than some blowhard that claims to agree with me.
IMHO, he wasn’t a particularly stand-up guy, and if he was a man of character, he didn’t choose to show it when the chips were down. I give him a modicum of credit for taking on the thankless Speaker job when no one else wanted it, after Boehner stepped down – you may recall that he only took it after a week or more of saying “no, really, I’m not interested in it.”
But, particularly once Trump took control, while Ryan would occasionally shake his finger at Trump, if he ever actually acted, in an official role, in any way that oppposed Trump, I never saw it. IMO, he consistently chose party over principle, and by doing so, seemed to illustrate that he had no principles.
I assume the current toxic environment has a lot to do with it.
Jeff Flake threw in the towel too.
Ryan has said many times he didn’t want the Speakers job. Chair of the House Ways and Means committee was Ryan’s dream job. He was pressured into becoming Speaker of the House.
I guess that soured him on continuing to serve in Congress.
“A man of character”? Paul Ryan? Oh yeah, he started out as a man of character, and wound up merely as a character. In short, the man sold out all his principles, putting himself on the same level as those who didn’t have any to begin with. Actually worse, because he was capable of greatness, and should have known what would happen to a politician without principles. I’ve lost all respect for him. Good riddance.
Actually, to correct myself, he’s more likely to become a personal trainer. He was famously photographed in shorts, a T-shirt and a backwards baseball cap pumping iron.
I have political biases, but Ryan was an empty suit.
His policy ideas were both cruel and based on fake math. He was trying to push through cruel plutocratic policies while pretending to be a choir boy. His attempts to privatize Medicare would’ve made medical care more expensive both for the patients and in general (total medical costs would be higher under privatized Medicare). The fact that his solutions were cruel and counterproductive meant nothing, all he cared about was forcing America to match his high school libertarian philosophy.
He spoke out against some of Trumps evil, but he was always willing to work with Trump to make America more plutocratic.
Also in his resignation speech he talked about how the gop had turned around years of stagnation. That is crap, unemployment was dropping for years, he just took credit for Obamas policies. Very duplicitous.
He was more like the pinata being raised up into the rafters for a beating than a rising star. He was always a bit of a compromise Speaker that the Freedom Caucusers didn’t like but thought was better than Boehner or the replacement options. They never really supported him. In the lead up to the 2016 election cycle there was a building push from the Freedom Caucus to replace him as speaker.
That cycle actually extended the Republican majority and weakened the relative position (based on seats) of the Freedom Caucus. The leadership challenge didn’t happen. The Freedom Caucusers got a president that they could rally around though. Ryan has been dealing with both the older internal discord and a President from his own party that would insult him on social media. That President was mercurial enough that some deals Ryan had worked on fell apart when the President publicly changed his mind. Ryan was lower down on the list of targets for Trump’s base the Obama or Clinton but he was on the list.
There comes a point when enough is enough. When Ryan announced his retirement I just assumed he’d hit his limit.
Paul Ryan was never a man of character, never an adult, never honest, constantly peddled lies, and never served anybody but himself. He lied about the ACA over, and over, and over. He actively worked to screw the poorest and most vulnerable Americans while telling them he was doing them a favor. He did everything he could to attack Social Security and Medicare, and cut taxes for the rich. His only guiding principle was selfishness.
And when the Trump train rolled into town, what did Ryan do? He was at the height of his powers. His party controlled all three branches of government. The time had come for him to gift us with his Ayn Rand Utopia he had been promising us for years… And he delivered jack shit. He couldn’t even repeal the ACA, which was the one thing Republicans (ostensibly) wanted more than anything. The only thing they did deliver on was tax cuts, which will drive up the deficit, which i thought was the opposite of what Republicans wanted. And then - when he was supposed to be accomplishing everything he wanted - Ryan tucked tail and ran like a little bitch, giving up on re-election rather than continue to deal with the Republican dumpster fire.
That is how much medicare would cost in 2022 according to the Kaiser family foundation.
Paul Ryan’s plan doesn’t even save money. Under all 3 scenarios (2 regular scenarios, and Paul Ryan’s scenario) government spending is still $8000 a year.
The big difference is that under Paul Ryan’s scenario, the beneficiaries spending would double. Going from 6k a year up to 12k a year.
Under ‘current medicare’, the government will spend $7900 a year, beneficiary spends $5630
Under Paul Ryan’s scenario, the government will spend $8000 a year, beneficiary spends $12,500.
Paul Ryan didn’t save any money. He just wants to make health care far far more expensive for the elderly because ‘public bad, private good’. He’d happily throw the elderly under the bus with brutal, overpriced health care to force America to look like his high school libertarian fantasies.
The sad part is that elderly white people are Paul Ryan’s base. But their medicare would be fine, it is their children who would suffer and sadly a lot of white elderly people are happy to fuck their kids over when it comes to civics.
According to something I read in the times, the only things Ryan cared about was cutting taxes on the wealthy and killing unions. I guess that’s what Republicans call an adult. Supply-side economics has never worked and will never work. Wasn’t it Bush 41 who called it voodoo economics?
If he wants money, he goes to K Street and becomes a highly paid hired gun.
If he wants power, he goes back to Wisconsin, writes a couple of policy books no one reads, quietly goes around the country campaigning for other Republicans in 2020, runs for either governor or senator in 2022 and runs for president in 2024.
Hell, even if he waits until 2028, he’d still be only 58.
His future is fine. Write a book about how the US needs to tackle its debt problem, advocate for entitlement reform, run for president — whatever.
I hope that his fellow Americans remember his dismal record before collectively elevating him to another elected office. But he’ll still have Koch, Mercer, Walton, and other oligarch families’ money to keep himself fed and clothed.
Sorry for the bitter tone of this post, but Paul Ryan really pissed me off. It comes down to the pretense of commitment to core principles, which he has been willing to jettison even when it wasn’t necessary to do so.
(I’m a pragmatist myself, but I dont pretend to be otherwise.)
Three years ago, Wisconsin was the home of the Speaker of the House (Ryan), the GOP Chairman (Reince Preibus), and a governor who was also seen as a rising star (Scott Walker). All three are now gone.
Yes, he’s been a two-faced, total fake, who presents whatever image he thinks will get him ahead politically.
The things that he would say to his constituents back home in Wisconsin weren’t in line with how he voted in Washington, regarding things like trade. He did nothing legislatively to try to prevent things like the closing of the GM plant in his home town. He didn’t “quietly serve the people of Wisconsin” at all. He knew the people there had caught on to him, and that he couldn’t get re-elected. That’s the only reason he didn’t run again.
And the image of the fiscally responsible (or “adult”) wonk was something that he contrived only once Obama was elected, to get attention in Washington. Before that, he supported all kinds of big spending. It was pure self-promotion, a calculated plan to rise politically, all hot-air. In the last three years–under his watch–the deficit has gone from $438 billion to $779 billion. “Quietly serve the people of Wisconsin” my ass. He was all about putting on an empty show, and his charts and graphs were just part of that.
All of this is to say nothing of how he completely lost his spine when Trump came along. He really is a completely unprincipled political hack. I’m sure that he’ll do what others have said above: find some kind of typical after-office politician job where he can continue to put on his show.
Lobbyist, or heading up a right-wing think tank, probably get a 7-figure advance for writing a book. By the time he’s 55, he’ll have a shit-ton of money, and can move to the Bahamas.
Yeah, he was an adult charlatan.
[del]people of Wisconsin[/del] interests of the ultra-rich.
FTFY.
Yeah, a man of character. All about balancing the budget, unless he could cut a trillion and a half from corporations’ and rich people’s taxes. Then his desire to balance the budget went out the window, only to reappear when Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any programs to help poor people were under discussion.
He was never a man of character. He’s always been a charlatan.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And a hearty fuck-you to the mainstream press whose bothsidesism dictated that they find someone to anoint as an honest conservative, and they picked Paul Ryan.