{"id":29112,"date":"2018-04-11T19:48:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T19:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29112"},"modified":"2018-04-11T19:48:24","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T19:48:24","slug":"speaker-ryan-gives-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29112","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Ryan gives it up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/paul-ryan-gty-jt-180411_hpMain_12x5_992.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-29113\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/paul-ryan-gty-jt-180411_hpMain_12x5_992-300x126.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"126\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/paul-ryan-gty-jt-180411_hpMain_12x5_992-300x126.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/paul-ryan-gty-jt-180411_hpMain_12x5_992-768x321.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/paul-ryan-gty-jt-180411_hpMain_12x5_992.jpg 992w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I had a glimmer of hope that Paul Ryan could retain some semblance of sanity in the U.S. House of Representatives when he became speaker of the people&#8217;s House.<\/p>\n<p><em>Damn, anyway!<\/em> It wasn&#8217;t meant to be.<\/p>\n<p>I never envisioned that Donald J. Trump would be elected president of the United States in 2016. Nor did I envision that Trump would reshape the Republican Party into an unrecognizable political unit.<\/p>\n<p>So, what does the speaker of the House do? He announced today he won&#8217;t seek re-election in his Wisconsin U.S. House district. He&#8217;ll walk away from public life at the end of the year to &#8220;spend more time&#8221; with his family.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know what is in Ryan&#8217;s head and heart. I guess we should accept his public statements about seeking more face time with his children and his wife.<\/p>\n<p>However, there well might be a political element to Ryan&#8217;s decision to call it a career.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has managed to mangle the GOP. He has &#8220;governed&#8221; &#8212; and I use that term with great caution &#8212; with a recipe that resembles something my grandmothers used to follow. They never measured anything; they just tossed ingredients into a mixing bowl and somehow what came out tasted good!<\/p>\n<p>I always considered Ryan to be a product of a more deliberate governing process. He is a product of Washington, D.C. He ran for vice president in 2012 to help bring some D.C. wisdom to the GOP ticket led by a former governor, Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s going to leave it to the next speaker &#8212; whoever the heck that turns out to be. I guess the task will fall on House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy &#8212; but that presumes that <em>Republicans<\/em> will retain control of the House after this year&#8217;s midterm election.<\/p>\n<p>That prospect is quite suddenly looking a good bit less likely. I suppose, then, that Ryan just couldn&#8217;t stand the notion of toiling in a legislative body led by someone such as Democrat Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n<p>So, do you suppose that Donald Trump had anything to do with Ryan&#8217;s decision to walk away? I believe that&#8217;s looking more and more like the case, no matter the outcome of the midterm election.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a glimmer of hope that Paul Ryan could retain some semblance of sanity in the U.S. House of Representatives when he became speaker of the people&#8217;s House. Damn, anyway! It wasn&#8217;t meant to be. I never envisioned that Donald J. Trump would be elected president of the United States in 2016. Nor did &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29112\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Speaker Ryan gives it up<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[849,1112,1424,1941,3524,4351],"class_list":["post-29112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-capitol-hill","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-paul-ryan","tag-speaker-of-the-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29114,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29112\/revisions\/29114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}