Nope. I can't do it. I can't even pretend to be shocked by this one. As usual, The Onion has it about right. Speaker of the House is supposed to be a great job. It comes with a great deal of formal power, and with great power comes great annoyance.
Let's go back a few years and remember how Paul Ryan got the job that he never wanted. Why? Because, I wrote about it in a book that you'll be able to buy on Amazon in a couple of weeks.
The short version is that the 2010 election shifted the legislative agenda. The combination of divided government and ideological polarization meant that no "normal" legislation could pass. Any bill moving policy to the right would get vetoed (or wouldn't make it out of the Senate until after 2014) and any bill moving policy to the left wouldn't get out of the House. So, gridlock. However, the lights needed to be kept on. Everybody was stuck trying to avoid "reversion" points, like government shutdowns and debt ceiling breaches, which the most extreme members of the House Republican caucus actually thought were kind of cool. Consequently, the Speaker's job was to split the Republican caucus rather than unify it. So, John Boehner had to keep pissing off the wackos in the Freedom Caucus, or face shutdowns (or worse yet, a debt ceiling breach). Every time he did so, he pissed off the Freedom Caucus, but he didn't really have a choice.
John Boehner had the hardest job in American politics, and he was a fuckin' genius at it. John Boehner was a great Speaker. Period.
The problem is that holding onto the Speaker's gavel requires unity among the majority caucus, and losing the support of the Freedom Caucus (sorry, but the word "caucus" has multiple uses) meant that he didn't have that anymore. Once that was gone, he stepped down.
Kevin McCarthy thought he had the votes to succeed Boehner. Fun story about this. When Boehner stepped down, I wrote a piece for The Monkey Cage about it, and as a side note, I warned about not presuming that McCarthy had the votes. I was instructed to take that line out of the piece. Editorial discretion. Then, McCarthy was forced to withdraw after an informal vote count, leaving my Monkey Cage article with its monkey balls hanging out. Not that I'm bitter about that...
Anyway, the House Republicans were in such disarray that the only person on whom they could agree was Ryan. But... he knew the job was a mess. He'd have to take the same votes as Boehner, and do the same things, so why take the job? As a condition for saying yes, he made Boehner pass a CR and raise the debt ceiling through the 2016 election. He was hoping for a GOP victory because continued divided government would put him in the same position all over again, in which case he'd be screwed. Instead, he got Trumped. At least he got a corporate tax cut out of the deal.
So, what's the deal now?
The job sucks. Why? Boehner called them, "the knuckleheads." The Freedom Caucus. The idiots who don't know when they've won. Still, he is in a position of power, right? Where else would he rather be? Here's the problem. It is a hard job, and getting harder. The 2018 election is right around the corner, and midterm elections go against the party of the president, barring something very strange. There is a relatively high likelihood of a Democratic takeover of the House. How high? Eh... hard to say at this point, but Trump's approval has been hovering around 40%, and the GOP House margin ain't great. So, what are the possibilities?
1) The GOP loses the House. If that's true, Ryan just becomes a minority party legislator. He could maybe stay leader, but... so what? There's no real power in that, and he can't go back to chairing Ways & Means.
2) The GOP retains the House, but with a slimmer margin. This just makes a difficult job that much harder, and... Paulie isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Boehner really knew Congress, and how to do that job under the most difficult of circumstances. Paul Ryan is a faker. If he winds up with, say, a 10-seat majority with the Freedom Caucus badgering him at every turn, he won't know what to do. He'd be way out of his depth.
3) The GOP retains the House, but loses the Senate. Divided government brought down Boehner, by my assessment. Easier to quit while you're ahead.
At the end of the day, Ryan got his corporate tax cut. What was he going to accomplish in 2019 or 2020? Not much. The rumors had been flying for a while.
Who's up next? I don't know. Better go wake up the gimp.
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