The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Poor Wee Paul Ryan

Posted on | April 11, 2018 | Comments Off on Poor Wee Paul Ryan

by Smitty

So the Speaker is ejecting. Along with guys like Trey Gowdy. Podhoretz is a doom-peddler, all emphasis mine:

John Boehner, his predecessor, quit rather than suffer through a challenge from the bomb throwers in the Republican House conference. There’s no precedent for this in American history. The Speakership has been one of the most powerful offices in the world. Now it’s apparently more agony than ecstasy for a Republican. It’s true Ryan never wanted the job, but power is usually its own reward. The problem is that the job is far less powerful than it ever was before. The nature of the Tea Party and post-Tea Party GOP caucus is so fundamentally anti-institutional that the prerogatives of leadership are nothing now in the GOP.

So. Jolly. What? There is nothing in the Constitution about these political parties that have put this country in debt well past the power of humans to imagine it. The US debt clock rolls on. The purported tax cut probably helped someone somewhere, I suppose. I broke even.

Ryan’s decision suggests he and others have seen enough internal data to know their capacity to hold their 23-seat majority is slipping away.

Really. The economy up; unemployment down; the U.S. making headway on foreign policy; I guess ejecting at the top of the game makes some twisted sense. It’s certainly easier than heeding the Tea Parties and doing any hard work to, you know, reform anything!

The bitter irony here is that the Tea Party–whose ab nihilo existence began the Republican resurgence in the House and Senate, and whose anti-Establishment ethos was the precursor to Trump–was obsessed with the idea that Barack Obama was breaking the bank, and rightly so. Now, the Tea Party forms the hard schist of the Republican base, and it’s clearly decided not to hold Trump accountable for his stewardship of budgetary matters. That means their concern for the issue is now just a vague talking point every once in a while.

It remains to be seen if the Tea Parties don’t conclude that the New York billionaire elected on the Republican ticket, alongside Ryan’s RINO Rangers that served the recent budget steamer aren’t, essentially, a copy of the Carter-era Democrat party. Especially in light of Ryan’s non-commitment to winning in November.

If the House has become an inhospitable place for a Paul Ryan, who actually cared about national matters more pressing than his next Fox appearance, then woe betide us all.

The sun has set on the Progressive Era. Social Media killed it. The time has come for our national come-to-Beevis moment, when we ask ourselves if the Progressive nannyism of the last century is still required.
All of the worshippers of Baal-Progress, turning the future into power for themselves and debt for their grandchildren, are cordially invited to join Ryan in heading for the exit.

Category: Uncategorized

Comments

Comments are closed.