After Paul Ryan left Congress in January 2019, he seemingly disappeared from the national political scene for almost exactly three years.
But over the past year he’s suddenly come out of hiding to pander to the legacy media while pushing for Republican voters to once again embrace the establishment elites.
And now Paul Ryan is attempting to run the ultimate Swamp power play as Kevin McCarthy’s secret establishment puppet master.
Up until this past summer, it seemed as though Paul Ryan was content to count the easy money he’s raking in from cushy, vanity “jobs,” like sitting on the Fox Corporation’s board of directors, that were only offered to him because he became Speaker of the House by default in 2015.
Regardless, Ryan popped up out of the blue in South Carolina back in June, apparently for the sole purpose of slamming the Republican Congressmen who hadn’t voted to impeach former President Donald Trump over a year and a half earlier.
Of course, all of the corporate-controlled media outlets who hilariously spent years attacking the RINO as “too conservative,” could not get enough of Ryan trashing Republicans.
And clearly, the former Speaker of the House loved the attention too, as he’s suddenly decided to jump back into politics headfirst, consistently appearing on legacy media outlets ever since.
But with the new Republican House majority just beginning to get its footing – specifically, new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) – Ryan apparently also sees an opportunity to expand his power and control.
One of the biggest looming battles in the new Congress is the fight over the debt ceiling, which will reach its legal limit within the next week or so.
That, of course, has caused the entire ruling class to demand that the debt ceiling just be raised once again, as if it doesn’t matter and serves no purpose, so they can add trillions more to the national debt.
And in an interview with ultra left-wing blog Semafor, Paul Ryan proved that he’s looking to be McCarthy’s puppet master by floating the idea that the California Congressman should be willing to risk losing the Speakership in order to force the ruling class’ debt ceiling increase into law, even if it could see him removed in his first two weeks on the job.
“To truly be good at these jobs, you have to be willing to lose the jobs. And I think Kevin has gotten to the stage in life and career particularly now that he has this job that he understands these things,” Ryan told Semafor. “I think now that he’s there, I think he understands there’s a limit to how far you can be pushed. That’s important, because if there is no limit, then people will just constantly push. Plus, he’s got 200 people on his side.”
“But at the end of the day, you have to be willing to lose the job if you want to be good at these jobs,” he continued. “And you have to make sure that people have expectations set according to what you’re able to accomplish and not something unachievable, which gets members, you know, with overly high expectations, and then they take it out on you when that doesn’t materialize.”
It is important to note that Paul Ryan only became Speaker of the House in 2015 because Kevin McCarthy, who was originally the frontrunner to be Speaker at the time, stepped aside as he knew that essentially the same conservative holdouts who held up his election as Speaker a couple of weeks ago, would have objected to him replacing then-outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).
At the same time, Kevin McCarthy is only speaker this time around because he folded and made all sorts of concessions to anti-establishment conservatives, including a promise to cut spending, to specifically use the debt ceiling to stop Democrats’ reckless socialist spending sprees, and a rule change that allows any Republican Member of Congress to initiate a motion to vacate the Speakership, amongst other concessions.
Put simply, Speaker McCarthy doesn’t have much leverage, and he’s now in between a rock and a hard place.
Does he do the establishment’s bidding once again and risk losing his job, or does he actually stick to his word and fight the good fight against yet another disastrous debt ceiling increase?
Either way, Paul Ryan’s power and standing as Republican establishment puppet master will be put to the test.
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
