The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Ryan's running in 20

    By Flavius on Wed, 04/11/2018 - 11:28pm |

    Since Ryan's announced reason for retiring  from  the Speakership is risible , clearly the  real reason is Ryan's belief that  doing so gives him a shot at a better job.

    One guess what that isl

    But first the pretend explanation.

    That he has teen age kids. Many people do.A miniscule % of whom  conclude the onslaught of off- spring adolescence is a rational  pretext for retiring from a good job just before those higher tuition bills start rolling in. No more needs to be said.Let's move on.

    So we agree  he believes bailing out as Speaker would help him become President. Why now?

    Because he believes he should run in 2020.

    But that's when Trump will be running for re-election !  Not  if  prior to then  Trump decides he won't.

    Which Ryan has concluded .

    Added later

    This implies  Ryan has concluded Trump will retain  sufficient popularity  to fend off impeachment ( and  replacement by Pence who' d be the 2020 candidate) but not to risk the humiliation of a failed re-election campaign.

     

     

     

    Comments

    Maybe, maybe not

    When a group of influential conservatives recruited him to run in 2012, Ryan laughed them off and told then-Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels that everyone was counting on him. When Romney and GOP megadonor Woody Johnson hosted a casting call for presidential hopefuls in Manhattan in the fall of 2014, Ryan snubbed the event—to Romney’s displeasure—because hunting season was opening and his kids needed licenses.

    The Ryan clan is close-knit. The speaker is a sixth-generation resident of Janesville, as is his brother and best friend, Tobin, whose wife and kids live practically around the corner. They were all rocked by the 2012 vice presidential run and had no appetite for another national campaign in 2016. “It’s a question of, how do you get his ideas front and center?” Tobin told me in 2014, hinting at the pressure Paul was under to run for president. “Do you have to throw yourself into the 2016 mix to get those ideas across? That’s a big price to pay.”

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/04/12/how-donald-trump-upen...

    ​This doesn't mean that he won't run in 2020, but I don't share your certainty that this is all part of his presidential plan. Usually people who hunger to become president don't give up the power and the limelight afforded by the Speakership.


    by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 3:13pm

    But Mike; I love my kids and my home and my wife and I do not like power?

    WHAT?

    They all say that at the end; like TYT and others espouse?

    But I do know this:

    Money abounds in a post Speaker's future.

    Hell, he can make tens of millions of bucks working with corps.

     


    by Richard Day on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 3:32pm

    All makes sense to me. The speaker job is thankless for the foreseeable future, all he is ever going to get from it is the name recognition and contacts he already has gotten, so now's the time for a pit stop at home to catch the end of the kids' growing up. Within a couple short years it will be an empty nest and he can hit the road again. Most people aren't lucky enough to be able to choose when to :"lean in" and when to pull back.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 4:43pm

    With his hours (and days off) he was able to spend more time with his family than most working people.  By the time they are teenagers, those kids want less time with parents and more with their pals.  So if this is for the kids as he claims, he missed his window of opportunity.

     I am happy to see less of his lipless face no matter what the reason.  Somehow, I don’t think this tax “reform” would win him anything in 2020.  What would he run on?  Destroying Social Security and Medicare?  Way to win the white geezer vote, Paul.


    by CVille Dem on Sat, 04/14/2018 - 8:08am

    Money abounds alright, and he ain't running in '20:

    Ryan Poised to Earn Millions Even If He Sheds ‘Weekend Dad’ Role

    Paul Ryan will easily add to his already considerable net worth if he opts to stray from his native Wisconsin to join a corporate board or dabble in Washington power struggles when he retires next year as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

    "The kind of board that he would go after would probably pay between $250,000 and $300,000 a year and he could probably get three or four of them," said Fred Foulkes, a professor of at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. "There would be dozens that would like to have him, particularly companies that have part of their business in key relationships with certain parts of government."


    by NCD on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 7:15pm

    The corporate tax cuts were the only cuts that were permanent in the Great Deficit Busting GOP Treasury Robbery, so it's Swamp payback time for Lyin Ryan.


    by NCD on Thu, 04/12/2018 - 7:31pm

    Of course money matters to him and the sun rises in the East. . But that's not what he's  spent most of what his adult life on.  I have no reason to doubt he has a completely normal concern about  his children's welfare but that didn't cause him to avoid spending that adult life  trying  to secure a position  1500  miles away.

    Where he then spent it  successfully trying to get to the  top of the greasy political pole located there.

    Until his actions demonstrate  some concrete indications otherwise  the default  assumption is what true yesterday is true today .

    Then why has he decided to abandon that greasy spot more or less just after slithering up ? Not IMHO because of a change in his  ultimate goal or of the number of Ryan  teen agers  ?  

    In the teeth of your many cogent objections my suggestion is that  he thinks the next president is not going to be Donald again. Nor somebody who spent the previous 24 months maneuvering to  protect him from a richly deserved Impeachment.

     

     


    by Flavius on Fri, 04/13/2018 - 5:01pm

    If you are correct, and Ryan is getting out now in order to stop being Trump's napkin, how will his GOP colleagues feel about getting stuck with the job just when the mid terms are starting up?
    If he hadn't so assiduously presented himself as a humble team player up to this point, maybe his cry of every man for himself could be forgotten after a couple of years.


    by moat on Fri, 04/13/2018 - 7:45pm

    Ryan's last year's product - was used up with the Romney run, and House speaker gave him 2nd life, but he's Trump's bitch now, and all things tTrump are going down. Ryan will seriously retire - he's boring as fuck, lives next to his brither, and his intellectual cred was way hyperboled to death. And that line to Hillary about we have to follow the rule of law would be shoved so far up his ass he'd smell Charmin. If he's not on tape taking money from Russians.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 04/13/2018 - 8:13pm

    ...would be shoved so far up his ass he'd smell like Charmin ...  dunno, I'm bored.


    by barefooted on Fri, 04/13/2018 - 8:28pm

    More likely Gov.Scott Walker loses in Nov. 2018 to some lackluster Dem (they've got a primary of 12 now), via anti-Trump effect and it's just sorta about time for the state to switch from the conservative thing as it has done  throughout history. But the guy or gal doesn't win the continued affection of Wisconsin, and after taking a few years off to make some bucks, Ryan runs against that guy/gal in 2022. What I see as someone from Wisconsin: he's a real Janesville, Wisconsin kinda guy, I buy that he never really belonged in DC; so as Speaker, the Peter Principle was at work. He strikes me as exactly the kinda guy Wisconsin likes as governor and I think he'd enjoy the job too. Believe it or not, he has an independent reputation there,I never got how he became Speaker, as his old rep. in Wisconsin is not a tried and true party guy.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/13/2018 - 9:15pm

    With the news from Syria this topic's probably reached it s  "sell by date.

    Como yo.

     

    corrected a typo

    FL


    by Flavius on Sat, 04/14/2018 - 10:52pm