Paul Ryan, the former vice presidential
candidate, is widely cited among many of his colleagues as a likable
enough chap who is polite to his elders in the hierarchy of Congress,
and this makes the more rabid bomb throwers seethe.
To them, that chummy, self-enlightened
pragmatism as well as his past embrace of immigration reform qualify
him as a so-called RINO, a Republican in Name Only, a "squish."
Time makes ancient good uncouth, as the
poem goes, and in the words of Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly's
"Political Animal" blog, "Nowadays if you are guilty
of having ever supported 'amnesty' your other heresies will be
uncovered, however old they are.
The other way to look at it, of course,
is that the GOP continues to drift to the Right, making yesterday's
ideological heroes suspect."
The House Freedom Caucus, the fractious faction of radical right-wingers gerrymandered into a permanent demolition squad, successfully conspired to bring down House Speaker John Boehner and his designated successor Kevin McCarthy.
The House Freedom Caucus, the fractious faction of radical right-wingers gerrymandered into a permanent demolition squad, successfully conspired to bring down House Speaker John Boehner and his designated successor Kevin McCarthy.
They have for the moment agreed to
support Paul Ryan's speakership, but not with the unanimity that
would constitute an official endorsement.
Further, it seems that for their
support to continue once he takes the job Ryan must pledge to curtail
some of his powers and enable the insurgents to continue to wreak
havoc on the day-to-day business of the House without fear of
punishment by the grown-ups.
There's a paradox to all this.
There's a paradox to all this.
Despite his ideological kinship with
the anti-government crowd, Paul Ryan is the embodiment of the troika
of money, power, and politics that corrupts and controls the capital,
the very thing the tea partiers detest.
Ryan is "a creature of
Washington," Red State's Erick Erickson wrote. "He
worked on Capitol Hill, worked in a think tank, then went back as a
congressman. He speaks Washingtonese with the best of them."
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