Still waiting
Agonizing over who will be the pick for Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy having done the right thing and dropped out, the GOP establishment is now pleading with Paul Ryan to be their savior. For the moment anyway Ryan is declining (Milwaukee Journal Star) :
“Kevin McCarthy is the best person to lead the House, and so I’m disappointed in this decision. Now it is important that we, as a Conference, take time to deliberate and seek new candidates for the speakership. While I am grateful for the encouragement I’ve received, I will not be a candidate. I continue to believe I can best serve the country and this conference as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.”
Here are some takes on Ryan from some conservative sites that either decry or question how different he would be — still Boehner 2.0?
Conservative Tree House (excerpts)
There were three names available for the secret ballot to take place in congress, Kevin McCarthy, Jason Chaffetz and Daniel Webster. While each of the aforementioned names carry both pros and cons, an objective person would have to ask why, if only one name is withdrawn (McCarthy), the House Leadership wouldn’t continue with the secret ballot with the two remaining names.
The decision to stop the vote is yet another blast of sunlight to evidence of what almost every Republican conservative is now fully aware. Namely the progressive GOPe will not allow a leadership election to take place without “their chosen progressive” as the ultimate winning nominee. The uniparty has a strong grip.
Now there is a full court press to make Wisconsin Representative, and former Mitt Romney GOPe running mate, Paul Ryan, the next Speaker of the House. And the progressive republican party will not take NO for an answer – you will accept him. Period.
The Republican and GOPe media advocates claim it is imperative for the Speaker of the House to represent the entire house, including Democrats, and therefore must be “above politics”. Horsepucky!
Did you ever see Democrats considering or asking republicans if Nancy Pelosi was okay? Was there ever a more partisan Speaker than Nancy Pelosi? Yet, for some insufferable reason this is the approach of the RINO/GOPe caucus and the water-carrying media of high brow pontificates. Allow me to present the next thousand words via imagery.
Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff’s analysis:
From my perspective, Ryan would be a bad choice. To my knowledge, no one in the House understands budgetary-type issues better than Ryan, and this, along with an apparently stellar personality, is the source of the high esteem in which he correctly is held.
However, when it comes to certain other issues, it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish Ryan from a bleeding-heart liberal. Immigration is an excellent example.
In 2013, Ryan was highly sympathetic to the push for amnesty for illegal immigrants . . .
Ryan is also a proponent of the kind of sentencing reform now being pressed in both the House and Senate. . . .
To the extent that House conservatives remain committed to fighting against amnesty and to sustaining the sentencing rules that helped produce a 50 percent reduction in the national rate of serious crime in the past two decades, they should be more opposed to Ryan than they are to the current leaders. . . .
If House Republicans want a rock-ribbed, uncompromising conservative leader, Paul Ryan is not their man. If House Republicans want a unifying figure, Ryan is not their man for the long haul. In fact, his bleeding-heart instincts would likely create new divisions.
Nate Jackson at Patriot Post thinks Ryan would be an outstanding Speaker: Here he quotes favorably Bloomberg Columnist Ramesh Ponnuru:
Bloomberg columnist Ramesh Ponnuru writes, “Ryan is respected by most people on both sides of the divide. Many of the Republicans who were against Boehner and McCarthy would listen to him, and trust him to listen to them. They sometimes disagree with him, but they trust that he is in politics because of conservative ideas. No other House Republican has the same reservoir of goodwill. No other House Republican is considered as good a spokesman on such politically perilous issues as entitlement reform.”
We don’t buy the apologetics in the latter reference as producing a compelling case for Ryan given what needs to be done. Consider again how important “goodwill”is to getting things done and inculcating policy preferences. Did Nancy Pelosi (or Harry Reid) rely on that to get Obamacare through or to protect the other aspects of the Obamanation? No, they did what they had to.
Likewise the country does not need a careerist or politically oblivious policy wonk as Speaker. Immigration and a few other matters are key right now. We need someone to make demands, to articulate, to use all available powers to save the country. Ryan was one of 90 Republicans to support the continuing resolution (CR) travesty we just went through, serving to continue to finance the Obamanation. One hundred and fifty Republican congressmen said no to the CR without some key amendments. The country is in dire straights. To start pick someone for Speaker from the 150, not the 90.
DLH and R Mall
“We need someone to make demands, to articulate, to use all available powers to save the country.”
I have given up any hope that this will happen. Both parties seem controlled by the same DC mindset.
Obama was not only elected, but re-elected. A sad reflection on where people want the country to be. Hillary Clinton, who should have been dismissed as a candidate for ANY election after lying to the parents of dead soldiers about ‘getting the film maker responsible for the Benghazi slaughter, who transmitted ‘top secret’ info on an unsecured server will be our next president. God save us all .
Chief George Washington has something to weep about.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/in-last-stage-of-corruption-is-resistance-possible/
Ramesh Ponnuru suggests that Paul Ryan got into politics because of his “conservative ideas”. So did other politicians. But, somehow it doesn’t take long for the most committed conservative to succumb to the Washington spell. Paul Ryan is one of the most prominent Republicans to do so, in my mind. At one time Ryan and Eric Cantor seemed to be the highly promising “young lions” of conservatism. Cantor wasn’t shown the door because he was too conservative in recent years. And Paul Ryan seemed to be such a good choice as VP candidate to offset to some extent, Mitt Romney’s liberal impulses. Well, we see how he has turned out, as noted by the various analyses above.
Just one additional question I would ask: Another who ran on a virtually straight line tea party “platform” was Joni Ernst. It was her perceived conservative instincts that rallied conservatives behind her and delivered the votes for what must be considered an upset even if her opponent was an unapologetic special liberal interest group tool.
Since her arrival in Washington, however, am I the only one who senses a “moderating” influence taking hold of Senator Joni?
Joni was always a moderate, her votes in the Iowa Snakepit told the tale.
The push was on for a WOMAN to be elected to the seat.
Have no doubt Leone is accurate concerning Sen. Ernst’s politically “moderate” background. Joni did, however, as I recall, campaign as a pretty staunch conservative. Unfortunately, there were quite a few Republicans who did the same thing. Tends to make a voter a little cynical, doesn’t it?