Paul Ryan Wishes You Luck With This Whole Trump Thing But He's Got to Get Going

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His "longtime dream" of codifying the budding plutocracy in the tax code now fulfilled, Ryan can retire in peace—or, you know, take an insanely lucrative lobbying job. What the report doesn't mention is that Ryan also faces a challenge from perceived Democratic supercandidate Randy Bryce, a career union ironworker who makes a damn good campaign ad and says all the right things. Bryce has an uphill battle in Ryan's red district, but he’s making noise.


(Ryan also faced a primary challenge from Paul Nehlen, a former goofball on a motorcycle who, in a true sign of our times, has recently taken a hard right turn into anti-Semitism—to the point he was suspended from Twitter. This raises the question of whether Ryan's replacement on the Republican ballot in his district will be a white nationalist.)

Politico already reported Monday on The Race to Replace, apparently a decathlon featuring House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise. (McCarthy was in the running when Ryan got the Speaker job in 2015. The Californian was eliminated when he gave away the game on national TV on how the Benghazi investigation was just a way to undermine Hillary Clinton's electoral prospects.) Whoever wins, we can only hope they'll show more courage than Ryan did in providing a check on the president as a co-equal branch of government. It is Ryan, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who bears the brunt of the responsibility for allowing Trump to run roughshod over our democratic norms and bring the nation as close to authoritarianism as it's been in at least decades.

Wednesday also brought an indication of why Ryan might be eager to get out of the game. The Speaker he replaced, John Boehner, has been visibly enjoying himself, mowing his lawn and driving his RV and smoking. Apparently, he's now open to the idea of smoking more than cigarettes and cigars

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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19743090/paul-ryan-leave-office-trump/