Paul Ryan won’t be running in 2018
Does this news make you happy?
It doesn’t make me happy.
Ryan is a moderate Republican. A lot of people on the right can’t stand moderate Republicans and want them out, either believing they can be replaced by conservatives, or not caring if they’re replaced by Democrats.
That seems short-sighted to me. It’s my observation that moderate Republicans usually come from moderate districts and are often replaced by Democrats who are pretending to be moderate but who don’t stand up to their leadership and who help the passage of progressive bills by voting for them. In 2018, the GOP is facing a tremendous challenge in trying to keep the House. Ryan’s retirement is both a sign of that trouble and most likely an event that will make the loss more likely.
It’s hard to believe that Ryan is only 48 years old. He’s run for Vice President, and been Speaker of the House. He says he wants to spend time with his children and family, but that’s what they all say. Maybe it’s even true for Ryan; he lost his own father to a heart attack when Ryan was a teenager, and that may be a factor here. But it’s highly unlikely to be the only factor. I think he’s tired, and sees the writing on the wall.
Sorry to be so politically gloomy.
I suspect those personal things caused him to reflect on his position and whether he wanted to keep doing what he is doing. He discovered that he no longer can do the job the way it needs to be done and so he’s determined it is best to leave.
Good riddance…
[i care not for labels that do not serve and distract – i ignore what is not important… wich most others dont do, having problems sorting what IS or isnt]
“If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people’s bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.’
Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
that list goes on.. showing how our fear, meant we stood with monsters we tried to appease not heroes we feared were monsters – artfldgr
IF you only knew what the past said as to such things as reaching across the isle and moderate and so on!!!!!!!!! We forgot all that… i didnt… i can’t – which is why i always bring up the forgotten, the lost, the buried for its dangerous disinfection powers…
oh to read William Reich’s – “Listen, Little Man!”
Its an interesting essay to see today and take away the right sentiment…
As is seeign Berlin Alone (Which actually softened the occupation, not once did anyone get asked for papers, or other real things that would have made it so bad it was less believable to the young]
i dont think anyone wants the real answers – and i have proof for the next post!
“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…. ” as the song says…
they certainly arent happy when you give it…
in fact… call it the defectors lament…
thats just how it is…
Thousands of obscure famous people whose words been erased from the public just so we can commonly have that attitude, and lose what we had that somehow brougth us here..
even in Ryan, we believe in the person, looking to the familiar thing to keep doing – and so sullen, and gloomy, you have no concept (you show) that what was could be bad. without your relizing, and what comes could be better…
no, in our mordern feminist racialist post everything world, everything leads to soviet gray and dark gloom.. it covers our talk, it oozes around and i am so familiar with it from my childhood i am sick of it and it turns my stomach to see people not know they are even doing this and will argue they arent..
that is the curse of being outside..
you cant know your world as it dont exist
but you see from afar the others, and what they dont see around them for they are in the locality, and you are watching from a distance
-=-=-=-=-
… Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. ‘Why so tragic?’ you ask. ‘Do you feel responsible for all evil?’ With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn’t perish, struck down by your smallness.”
-=-=-=-=-
the only way the masochism of man can clearly be seen is if you do not suffer the same social malady…
@ Artfldgr
If you want to write a blog, I’m certain a lot of us would find it entertaining, as well as highly informative.
My own take on a “Comment” is that it should be like a limerick: pithy, terse, and, if possible, mildly entertaining.
Three things happened nearly the same day that started us on this path of scary knowledge of communist systems…
Igor Guzenko defected…
Churchill gives his iron curtain speech (and the liberals howled) but churchill behaved much like trump..
the last step was The Long Telegram…
but what is the defectors lament about the truth?
Igor Guzenko [he had papers on Hiss]
Vasili Mitrokhin [tons of stuff]
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky [had to leave his wife behind]
and about 5 more i can list
what is common about them is that they are all defectors that changed sides and either became spies themselves or exfiltrated archival records from the KGB and GRU
the lament of the defectors is that EACH one thought this informaiton would be very important to the american people. that this would have some effect on the monstrosity…
but it didnt… most are not even known publicly.. and despite their CV, they are not listened to much.. and yet… we discuss the stuff they are a part of almost daily on some level, and without that real information.
so no. we do not want the real information, confirmed, etc.
we want to not know, to work it out, to fill in blanks with imagination as we are trained as children to do, not trained to see that its blank and wonder why…
in fact no matter how muc you bring it up, you cant even get curiosit and such in play… we are VERY well trained to avoid certain things and not even realize we are avoiding it!!!
Rationlizing away any reason contrary to the point!!!
A defense against a truth in which opinion and such would have little bearing and whose nastyness and inventiveness exceeds the imagination of the common and uncommon..
the discussion without that is always safer
after all, its not real and only bumps against the truth of it known in other places you can look up, by accident!!
we may remember Hiss, but do we remember the man who revealed him and the OTHER stuff?
about the poisoning in UK… what did these people say?
what did they say before? what did they say that woud have changed your discussion over the course of your life? what was said that DID change it, but you have no idea that it has a source?
creepy questions… no?
Oleg was a changer… like neo pretends to study, but her changers never had to give up their wife and family to get a message out that no one pays attention to, not even those interested in changers!!!!!!!
Oleg Gordievsky pleaded in vain with British intelligence to extract his family from the Soviet Union…. Documents released to the National Archives in Kew expose the complex calculations
you can read them. they are validated and verified… or they would not be there as such, but as examples of something else!!!!
why would we want to know?
“Hetman” — the codename under which Gordievsky operated — had disclosed that at least 25 Russian and east European diplomats based in London were spies. The government was determined to expel them but hesitated as it bargained over the fate of Gordievsky’s family. [think of this when russian diplomats are ejected by Trump. you think trumps information has not been “updated” or he is acting withotu that knowlege and we know more?]
The meeting was attended by Thatcher, Howe, the home secretary, Douglas Hurd, the head of MI5, Sir Anthony Duff, and “C”, the head of MI6. They agreed to abandon attempts to free Gordievsky’s family and expel “25 identified Soviet intelligence officers”.
“it was recognised that this would be hard for Hetman to accept. It should be explained to him that we had already risked a lot by the delay.”
tough crap changer… we like your help, but your wife and family are screwed – and we will forget the change too… ignoring most of what you have said…
thank you come again..
and they did…
Oleg G. Bitov defected… then went back to moscow.. like the red head spy, who replaced the blond bombshell spy of the past..
[the soviet union fell, she had no place, she returned to die a cheesehead in wisconsin a few years ago]
when Vasili Mitrokhin showed up, we turned him down, and MI6 got him, and he defected…they went in, and got his family, and got his papers..
he refused unless the papers were published..
doesnt anyone want to know what six trunks of soviet KGB archives closed to the public even when opened other areas?
they did not make the mistake they did with Oleg..
the second set of published papers would make your eyes go round about the ghandi family… Arafat… and tons of others…
i sit and OFTEN hear you talk about facts that are no longer facts, they were negated by the archives and history has not changed to keep up with them.
what do you do?
do you answer the old lie? or the new fact?
or do you do what the title fo the book does?
New Lies for Old Lies?
delete this if you want…
no one really wants the real information that is validatd, pulbished and out there free of charge..
Full text of “The Sword and the Shield – The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB”
https://archive.org/stream/TheSwordAndTheShield-TheMitrokhinArchiveAndTheSecretHistoryOfTheKGB/The+Sword+and+the+Shield+-+The+Mitrokhin+Archive+and+the+Secret+History+of+the+KGB_djvu.txt
“A lot of people on the right can’t stand moderate Republicans and want them out, either believing they can be replaced by conservatives, or not caring if they’re replaced by Democrats.
It’s my observation that moderate Republicans usually come from moderate districts and are often replaced by Democrats who are pretending to be moderate but who don’t stand up to their leadership and who help the passage of progressive bills by voting for them.”
IMO, that’s valid but incomplete. Historically, ‘moderate’ Republicans do not work for conservative principles, they merely slow down the speed of the culture toward the same destination… the Collective.
It’s not that they don’t accomplish some good. It’s that they accomplish far less than the Left when the Left has a majority. This is intentional and also the result of the dem’s working toward a ‘vision’ (however dysfunctional and ultimately tyrannical) and the pubs fighting a ‘delaying action’, given that their only ‘principle’ is avoidance of actions that “rock the boat”.
Republican moderates are less ‘moderates’ than establishment, which wants the continuance of the status quo, i.e. the maintenance of status, power and money.
Much of the problem is that Congress is not financially dependent upon the base, they are financially dependent upon their big donors… the larger the percentage of campaign contributions, the greater the attention Congress pays to it.
We are the product NOT the customer.
It is of such people (establishment) of whom Lenin spoke when he observed that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we’ll hang them”.
Gary D G, i did..
But then one day my gilrfirnd and i wok up and leftists were in our driveway to have a talk… it was the second time…
i keep hearing people say they want to know the truth, the real information, not the public lies..
but then you try to show them.. with proof..
that some of the stuff they discussed no longer exists and never did, as the archive was opened and the details now are known!!!
delete it then.. tell me to leave
but the point is, no one wants to know the actual information
they are more comfortable with the lies they know
they dont want to update what was guessed in the past that is now released…
how many here know what Arafats KGB name was when he worked for them… or even KNOW not assume he did…
have fun
delete it neo.
waste of time
lets discuss the made up stuff
where do we start guessing?
I for one enjoy Artfldgr. I’m sure his comments are logical, though it seems more stream of conciousness and I sometimes drift off. I’ll say that’s as much a reflection on me as him.
There’s always the scroll button. Oh, my keyboard doesn’t have a scroll button.
The problem is “true” conservatives do not win elections, and if, by some strange coincidence, they do, they don’t last.
steve w,
The palpable hostility toward Sen. Ted Cruz is a pretty good indication of where the great majority of Senate Republicans stand in regard to conservatism.
I note all the stories about how the Republicans in Congress are increasingly worried about losing the Senate and the House, as well, and they should be.
By any measure, these supposed Conservatives and Republicans have failed the voters who elected them, have failed to pass conservative legislation but did pass–virtually sight unseen–the biggest spending bill in U.S. history.
Were there any real, major protests about how this 2,300 page bill was rammed through, with those rank and file members voting on it given only 17 hours to read and understand it–virtually the same legislative malpractice and chicanery as happened during the passage of the Affordable Care Act i.e. Obamacare?
I didn’t see any.
Where any of the pressing problems the U.S. has, that Republican voters elected them to fix, really addressed?
Increased military spending? That they did, but at the cost of including funding for a lot of other programs that should have been drastically reduced, or eliminated altogether.
Reducing government spending? Nada. Quite the opposite.
Full funding for the border Wall? Nope.
Reforming Entitlement spending? Nope.
Reforming/tightening Immigration laws? Not this either.
Drastically curtailing the power of the Department of Education, and returning control of schools back to the States? Nope.
Defunding Planned Parenthood? No again.
Reinforcing 1st and 2nd Amendment protections? Nope.
A major all hands on deck program to reduce Opioid deaths? Some money, but nothing of this magnitude.
Etc., etc.
Did the Republicans stick together, and fight like hell to promote and pass Conservative legislation, and to block Democrat/liberal legislation? No.
What we did get was a lot of TV posturing, a lot of recesses and vacations, little if any cooperation in passing Trump’s agenda (and a lot of contempt going Trump’s way), and a lot of acquiescence to Democrat policies and legislation.
Given the things they did and the things they didn’t do, a lot of these supposed Conservatives/Republicans need to go.
The problem will be with filling their places with actual Conservatives who–once elected–will fight to pass Conservative legislation, and who will vote as they promised to vote.
Unfortunately, once the newly elected step inside the Beltway almost all of them immediately contract the “Inside the Beltway Disease,” and get seduced/co-opted by the Establishment/the Deep State.
From then on in, they talk one thing and do another, the only voices they really hear and pay attention to are the voices of their major donors, and they just hope they can confuse the voters sufficiently to get them to re-elect them, so that they can keep their place on the gravy train.
Agree GB. Remember the wave of Tea Party congress folks elected? They are all gone, except for perhaps Amash, and he is of no consequence in matters legislative.
Then there is this: Congress’s popularity consistently polls very, very low, yet incumbents are re-elected at very, very high rates. That’s on the voters.
All those cheering the departure of RINO Ryan will fail to elect a Conservative replacement.
What are they going to do, Snow? As long as there is a 60-vote majority required to pass a bill in the Senate, that’s what’s going to happen.
Either the filibuster has to go, or the GOP has to get 60 Senate seats. In the meantime, though, no Republican congressperson should resign –Congress is just too damn close.
I like Ryan because he is rooted in his hometown. I can’t stand the “consevatives” like Coulter who demand absolute purity on one issue that may change from week to week. I agree with Steve: It’s on the voters.
Brian E Says:
April 11th, 2018 at 3:58 pm
I for one enjoy Artfldgr. I’m sure his comments are logical, though it seems more stream of conciousness and I sometimes drift off. I’ll say that’s as much a reflection on me as him.
There’s always the scroll button. Oh, my keyboard doesn’t have a scroll button.
* *
I use the mouse wheel when my eyes glaze over.
But I usually read through the history lesson of the day, because it’s very informative, and no one else on the poli-blogs bothers to remind us that there really were Russians in the government, far predating Mr. Trump’s friends.
Just downloaded this one, which I’ve heard about but never read.
“THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD will stand as an indispensable reference
work on Soviet espionage for years to come.’ – THE WASHINGTON POST
Had to correct some typos just in that little bit of the scan, so it may be a hard slog.
But I usually read through the history lesson of the day, because it’s very informative, and no one else on the poli-blogs bothers to remind us that there really were Russians in the government, far predating Mr. Trump’s friends.
People got tired of telling clueless Americans about it since the usual reaction was a blank deer in the headlights stare or active hostility to the notion that the great FDR and other American “patriots” ever betrayed the USA to Russia.
If you don’t know who Yuri Bezmenov was and his debrief videos, then you can only blame your “public education” I suppose.
Jim Geraghty at National Review on Ryan’s announcement:
Sounds like a madhouse. If I were 48 years old, had three children to raise, and a father who died suddenly at age 55, I’d get the hell outta there, too.
I find Ryan’s choice worrying since it suggests the mid-terms are going to be tougher than I expected for Republicans.
Then again, Ryan may really have some decent family values, and is not influenced by the mid-terms.
I have long admired Ryan. IMO, he’s one of the good guys. He’s sacrificed much of his family life, and our loss is their gain:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/11/how-paul-ryan-went-from-young-gun-to-gone/
Then again, Ryan may really have some decent family values, and is not influenced by the mid-terms.
Ed: Maybe, but I can’t believe a politician so ambitious to make it as far as Ryan has at a relatively young age isn’t partly guided by political calculations.
The only exception I can imagine is some dire health news.
Personally I don’t think there will be a blue wave. History says that the POTUS party loses seats somewhere in the 24-30 range, but a lot of that is the POTUS usually has coattails and it is those coattails that get trimmed. However, Trump didn’t have coattails. In most cases those swing seats went Democrat.
In 2002, it was expected that Bush would lose seats, but he also really didn’t have any coattails. Instead they gained in the house and the Senate (9/11 had some effect) on that, but it wasn’t until 2006 when he actually lost the coattails and that was the perfect storm, the Iraq war, the GOP were degenerates because of the Page scandal and the fact that the Dems ran a lot of Blue Dogs.
2008, 2010 and 2014 wiped out the Blue dogs and the Tea Party did get the majority for the GOP but as usual the GOPE betrayed them but mainly the Press, Obama, Reid and Biden went on the terrorist rants and called them far right extremists. The GOPe agreed with the Reids and Bidens and that is why we are at this point.
If they lose the majority this year, the GOPe will take the blame. Also, except for some of Trumps foreign policy he has been far more conservative in his actions than I believed he would be and that I believe is why his popularity is growing in the polls. If he can maintain the 50% area, the GOPe will start doing some more legislation that will be helpful in the mid-terms.
I think it’s too bad about Ryan. But I disagree, neo, with
sees the writing on the wall.
He sees, and believes, the writing in WaPo & NYT.
He talks too much to Dem TrumpHaters, as well as to silly Rep. NeverTrumpers.
I don’t like Trump’s huge budget … wait, that was RYAN’s huge budget. Trump says he won’t sign off on such a big monster next time, who knows? Yet, strangely, almost all of the promises he made, he seems to be trying to keep … except for putting Hillary in jail.
And it’s still not too late for that (plus he SHOULD be pushing to get an indictment, and let a jury trial decide if she’s guilty, not some Deep State bureaucrat mucky muck wannabee).
Don’t you like that? Deep State bureaucrat mucky muck wannabee.
Maybe that’s what Ryan sees himself becoming and would rather just leave.
Time for Tea Party conservatives, grass roots voters, to get busy in all the 435 Congressional Districts, and avoid too many wack-o types, especially not the explicit nazis.
Shrugs.
Better get out of DC while you can, Ryan. Just saying.
He looks so squeaky clean, all American, he talks so earnestly and, yet, he is part of the Congressional Establishment, the inside the Beltway, old boy system that has tried–and pretty much succeeded at–blocking most of the legislation that would enact the (to him, apparently, hated) Trump Agenda (which includes apparently not trying very hard to get Senate Republicans to agree to vote through legislation that the House has passed.)
Has he stood up for bedrock Conservative ideas?
Has his tenure been good for the American people, for Conservatives?
I’d argue, overall, it hasn’t.
Paul Ryan is, and has been, a liability for the GOP almost from the moment he became high-profile. He was a liability for Romney in 2012, too.
The problem is that there is a basic divide in the GOP between the voting base, which leans social conservative, nationalist, often has New Deal sympathies, traditionalist, etc., and the GOP elites, which tend to be either Ayn Rand libertarians (at least in theory) or simply business advocates.
In 2010, the GOP recaptured the House because of public outrage over Obamacare and Obama’s overreach. The new Congress had not even been sworn in yet before Ryan was talking publically about voucherizing Medicare. The instant he said that, the GOP was back on defense, because even GOP voters recoil from that.
To the degree Ryan believes in anything, it’s Ayn Rand and Jack Kemp Republicanism. The GOP base wants illegal immigration ended and legal immigration reduced, Ryan wants open borders and amnesty. The GOP voters are sick of hearing about free trade, and think it’s a failure, Ryan is a dedicated free trader at heart. The GOP voters think big business is out of control, Ryan answers to the Chamber of Commerce.
Ryan and McConnell not only didn’t advance the goals of their voters in the most recent budget deal, they _handed back Trump’s successes_.
Yes, there’s a good chance Ryan will be replaced by a Democrat. But it’s also a fact that Ryan himself has repeatedly harmed GOP election chances, over the course of several elections.
s1c Says:
but it wasn’t until 2006 when he actually lost the coattails and that was the perfect storm, the Iraq war, the GOP were degenerates because of the Page scandal and the fact that the Dems ran a lot of Blue Dogs.
It had less to do with any of that than it did the attempted immigration bill in 2006, in which Bush teamed up with Teddy Kennedy and John McCain to try and pass Comprehensive Amnesty.
That did more harm to the GOP all by itself than everything else combined.
The following year, after losing Congress because of attempted amnesty, Bush teamed up with McCain and Kennedy for another attempt at….amnesty. The same bill again, with a few cosmetic changes. Once more the public blew up.
So they tried again, and again public opposition stopped it, and drove the GOP’s stock even lower for 2008.
In 2008 the GOP elites decided that there were 3 acceptable candidates, McCain, Romney, and Giuliani. None of them were electable, and the reasons for their unelectability were precisely the reasons the reasons that GOP elites liked them and wanted them. All would have been open-borders and amnesty advocates.
In 2013 the GOP tried yet again to pass the amnesty bill, and it cost Eric Cantor his seat in Congress and the majority leadership, and destroyed Marco Rubio’s chances at the Presidency in 2016.
In 2016, the GOP tried to run Jeb Bush, openly pro-amnesty, only to see him lose to Donald Trump of all people, because immigration.
It’s about immigration.