Ryan has a teenage daughter. I’d love to see someone confront him on camera and ask him how he’d feel if once her classmates was caught bragging about he’s such a stud she’d let him get away with grabbing her pussy. Using the exact same words Trump did. And this might make me a bad person, but I wish it’d happen with his daughter standing there. Then he can go on to explain why still endorses Trump.
Simple. He puts party over cuntry.
:golf clap:
[TV golf whisper]well played[/whisper]
I was gonna write “rimshot,” but I don’t think I will.
D’oh!
And it’s starting to look like Ryan may not be Speaker in the next Congress, even if the Republicans hang on to the House. His popularity amongst Republicans has nose-dived over the past ten days, since his phone call with the Republican House Conference.
According to HuffPost, his net favorably ratings have declined by 28 points with Republicans generally, and 44 points with Republicans who support Trump.
Only 40% of Republicans now hold a favorable view of Ryan. That drops to 28% amongst Trump supporters.
A majority of Trump supporters don’t want to see Ryan back as Speaker.
Spinelessness is getting its just reward, it seems. He tried not to upset anyone and ended up pissing off everyone.
I never thought I’d say this, but John Boehner is the smartest man in the Republican party: he got out while the getting was good.
Ryan’s in hot water with Sean Hannity:
That isn’t gonna help Ryan’s numbers rebound. 
Somebody has to be the party’s House leader (possibly the minority leader, at this rate). Ryan was the only one they could find the last time, and he had to be dragged into it. So, if not him, then who?
I know he isn’t going to get much sympathy around here but you got to empathize a little. He gave up a pretty powerful gig (Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee) to be the party’s punching bag.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
It does not have to be that way. If the man had the stones, he could stand-up to the nutty faction that has taken over his party. But he weaseled out of any uncomfortable confrontations that may have cost the party a few votes.
This is good news. The Speakership help his visibility for a 2020 presidential run; without that his chances diminish a bit. Throw in the fact that the alt-right base will remember this during the primaries and he may not survive a challenge, then there’s even less chance people will see him as the “adult” in the room of squabbling Republicans kids.
Just because he’s made a different political calculation doesn’t mean he lacks stones. Face it, the “brave” thing you want him to do could have ugly consequences for Ryan’s party. Maybe just maybe he’s less ok with that then you.
Or you know, he would easily survive the challenge. Ryan annihilated his most recent opponent who spouted Trump-like lines while the Ryan-Trump fueding was making news.
If Ryan stands up to the “nutty faction”, he probably loses the fight. For example, just considering the Presidency, the past couple of general elections had Republicans garnering popular vote totals in the high 50-million to low 60-million. Trump captured 14 million votes in the primaries; that’s about 25% of the general election vote count right there. If he works with other party leaders to try to alienate the “nuts” and the effort fails, he gets kicked to the curb for disloyalty. If the effort succeeds and the “nuts” split off, now the Republicans have to figure out how to bring in millions of new voters into the fold. Even 2008 Obama, for all his popularity, “only” managed to bring to the table an addition 9 million votes or so.
Moral victories are nice and all, but political victories are the ones that result in opportunities to implement change. With the benefit of hindsight, Ryan probably should have paid more attention to what was going on with Boehner and stayed put.
Oh I have no doubt Ryan played plenty of attention to what was going on with Boehner and knew he was stepping onto a hornets nest. Not sure what his thinking was in taking the job. Was it a real desire to re-unite/guide the party or did he think it would look cowardly to refuse it? Hard to say what but I don’t agree with those who think his resistance to the job was political theatre.
One school of thought is that Ryan wants, or at least wanted, to be President, but thought that being Speaker would permanently keep him in the House.
But only one guy really knows and he ain’t sayin’.
Like most big decisions in the real world, Ryan wasn’t thinking along one dimension. I don’t care for his politics, but he’s reasonably skillful at playing the game. Certainly more so than any of us here, myself included.
Which game means balancing the inherently unbalanceable and ranking the unrankable. He goofed. Nothing more. If nothing else, politics in the social media age is much more volatile with more wildcards than in previous eras. Everyone is still learning how to play the new game in the new era. Which will different again by 2020.
This is really it. Sometimes it works and one is labeled a political genius. Sometimes it fails and one is labeled spineless or worse.
Anyone trying to triangulate against Trump is hard pressed. Because he keeps moving the goal posts (hell, the whole playing field) farther and farther out into the weeds. The most outlandish predictions about Trump back in January were surpassed by May and are lost in the sediments of Deep Time here in October.
Except my objection to him is that Trump was way outside normal policy grounds, much as PJ O’Rourke commented. Sure, politicians within the same party can disagree about policy and yet support each other as members of the party.
Ryan thought he could oppose Trump’s position on Muslim immigration, attacks on Mexicans, attacks on a federal judge, attacks on Gold Star families, attacks on women, attacks on individuals with disabilities, and yet still support him as a Republican.
That’s more than just the normal intra-party disputes. By endorsing Trump as fit for the Oval Office, Ryan is either saying that despite all his protests, he really doesn’t think all of Trump’s attacks on individuals are deal-breakers; or, he agrees that Trump isn’t fit for the Oval Office but can’t bring himself to say so, because Trump is the Republican candidate.
The first option means Ryan is fundamentally dishonest. The second means that he’s spineless and truly believes Party before Country.
Agreed. And of the 535 Republican congresspersons or wanna-be congresspersons, that’s pretty much the central dilemma of this era in general and this election in specific.
Damn near all of them have tried to triangulate, punt, or simply hide and hope not to be asked the question. Ryan, and a few others, by virtue of their position couldn’t get away with doing this.
I’m not so much defending Ryan in an absolute sense as saying he’s about the same relatively speaking as any other mainstream R. At least as to the particular issue of repudiating Trump and all his works.
The rest of the R pantheon of former whatevers, pundits, think tankers, etc., have the same problem. Not having to face an electorate, one would predict more of them can afford to take an unambiguous stand against Trump. And lo ad behold, more of them have. Not nearly enough IMO, but more.