Wouldn't It Be Great If There Was A Way To Wipe Ryan's Slate Clean?

Paul Ryan just got big raise-- from the $174,000 a congressman makes to the highest pay anyone in Congress gets, $223,500 as Speaker. And a lot of free TV time. In fact, today Ryan was scheduled for ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, CNN's State of the Union, Fox's Fox News Sunday, and NBC's Meet The Press. But the former Tortilla Coast waiter-- ironically, the restaurant where Ted Cruz and the so-called Freedom Caucus plotted the political demise of Ryan's predecessor-- has proudly announced-- somewhat after he said he was appointing a shady corporate lobbyist, David Hoppe, to be his new chief of staff-- that he is "just a normal guy" and will continue to save money by sleeping on a cot in his office. Do normal guys sleep in their office? At least he agreed with Dana Bash he's a guy known for his big ideas.



Big ideas? Like declaring on Fox News Sunday that paid family leave doesn't make any sense. No hypocrite he... family time is weekends-- another idea conservatives once opposed but that progressives fought for. Unfunded entitlements... anything conservatives and the billionaire class doesn't want to see happen. The DCCC won't be running a candidate against Ryan-- in a district where Obama beat McCain 185,855 (51%) to 176,152 (48%)-- but Tom Breu is mounting his own little campaign and he called Ryan's decision to kill family leave "cruel irony to countless working families."



Worse yet, is Ryan's decision that he won't even deal with the country's immigration problems until Obama is out of office (and, presumably, Hillary is president). What he told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press is that he's not capable of making the GOP a governing party, just a (hopefully more effective) opposition party. As for immigration, the country can pound sand, regardless of his previous statements (before the promises he made to the Freedom Caucus to win their votes) in which he said he favored a comprehensive solution that includes a path to citizenship. "The president has proven himself untrustworthy on this issue, because he tried to unilaterally rewrite the law himself. Presidents don't write laws. Congress does. The president's proven himself to be untrustworthy on this issue. I think if we reach consensus on something like border enforcement, interior security, that's one thing. But I do not believe we should advance comprehensive immigration legislation with a president who’s proven himself untrustworthy on this issue."

He talked about offering a bold agenda but everything he babbled about said one thing: "small bore." And, of course, he repeated-- at every opportunity-- that "Any one of these people who are running for the Republican nomination would be a far better president than Hillary Clinton in my judgment." His judgment includes Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal... the whole dysfunctional, catastrophic deep bench. He's not good at picking the lesser of evils, that's abundantly apparent.