Posted on 10/09/2015 7:23:40 AM PDT by xzins
How Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan went from budget-balancing conservative wunderkind, to GOP vice presidential nominee, to channeling Nancy Pelosi when he snarled, “It’s declassified and made public once it’s agreed to,” as he tried to sell Obama’s Trade Promotion Authority and Trans-Pacific Partnership treaties to skeptical conservatives during Rules Committee testimony on Wednesday is one of Washington’s saddest tales of how DC’s inside elite capture talent and bend it to their will.
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Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan were visualized as a new generation of Republican leader who would challenge the older establishment-types.
In the foreword to their book “Young Guns,” released in September of 2010, Fred Barnes wrote, "...the creation of Young Guns was a revolt against older, established Republican leaders in the House. The party establishment was dedicated to protecting incumbents at all cost. With money, manpower, and advice, Young Guns supports challengers, many in races that otherwise might be ignored by the national party. Young Guns is partial to young, reform-minded Republicans. It is eager to erase the image of congressional Republicans as big spenders preoccupied with assuring their own reelection. In short, Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy would like to fill the ranks of House Republicans with members, like themselves, committed to policies and legislation infused with the principles of limited government, free markets, and individual freedom. Young Guns is not for "me-too" Republicans, those comfortable with a scaled-back version of the Democratic agenda."
Yet, after the 2010 Tea Party wave election that returned Republicans to the majority in the House, and vaulted Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy to leadership position in that new majority, what the conservative voters who turned-out to make that majority possible was a series of lies about the budget and spending, “me-too” Republicanism and not even a scaling back of the Democratic agenda.
Republicans, who had had promised $100 billion in real cuts during the campaign, compromised with the Democrats for $38.5 billion in future savings and claimed the deal would result in "the biggest annual spending cut in history," as President Obama termed it.
Yet, as then-Senator Jim DeMint later noted, there was no actual reduction in spending. Here’s what really happened when the fiscal year ended on September 30, 2011: the Congressional Budget Office found that the April deal to avoid a government shutdown resulted in an increase of more than $170 billion in federal spending from 2010 to 2011.
Hailed by leaders of both political parties (and the establishment media) as a historic compromise that produced the “largest spending cut in history,” the deal negotiated by Paul Ryan ended up being a spending increase.
The federal government wrapped up its biggest spending year and its second biggest annual budget deficit ever -- but, as The Wall Street Journal put it, almost nobody noticed.
Perhaps the WSJ should have said no one noticed the lie upon which the spending deal was founded, because everyone on the inside, and especially Paul Ryan, knew there would be no decrease in spending. And the historic “budget cuts” would actually result in the federal government spending $3.6 trillion -- a 4.2 percent increase in outlays that also ballooned the annual deficit to $1.298 trillion.
Yet Paul Ryan’s star continued to rise and when Mitt Romney chose him as his running mate in 2012 many conservatives embraced the Ryan choice as an opportunity to place one of their own in line for the presidency and in the near term have a key spokesman for the conservative agenda in the inner circle of the decidedly non-conservative Romney campaign.
What conservatives got from vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was pretty much the same as they got from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan – someone who out of the camera’s eye told them he was a “young gun,” but who failed to move the Romney campaign to the right, or to even get it to embrace his own ideas, while he readily went along and got along with Romney’s listless content-free establishment Republican ideas and campaign.
Those conservatives who saw Paul Ryan and his fellow “young guns” as the vanguard of a new conservative House might profit from recalling the ending of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
In his arrogant dismissal of conservative populist concerns about Obama’s secret trade deal, in his outright lies about its provisions, and especially in his angry advocacy of establishment Republican corporatism that would continue the destruction of the aspirations of America’s working families, blindly hand President Obama the power to deal away American sovereignty and bypass Congress on a host issues from expanding immigration to “climate change,” the transformation of Paul Ryan from Jack Kemp-style optimistic conservative into one of those "establishment 'me-too' Republicans, those comfortable with a scaled-back version of the Democratic agenda," seems complete.
Ryan, if we all recall, was in favor of stripping vets and active duty members of current and deferred pay. This among other things makes him a snake in the grass.
A Boehner clone
Ryan is for RomneyCARE/ObamaCARE
and SECRET Treaties for Obama.
Why not just keep Boehner.
Ryan was Romney’s idea of balancing the ticket.
Yep. He had me fooled years ago, but no longer.
Paul Ryan is a Cheap Labor Express lackey.
There must be a member of Congress who isn’t bought and paid for that could serve as Speaker.
Ryan and his ilk are just the symptom of a much bigger problem within the GOP. The party is not, and never will be, conservative. It is a weak, soulless party devoid of any convictions or principles.
Its quite amazing that, despite being stabbed in the back election after election, the Republican base continues to support and vote for these duplicitous people and actually believes the party still represents them. Amazing.
The only other choice with legitimate ballot access is the democrat party.
The only other choice with legitimate ballot access is the democrat party.
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The Democrat Party still runs both houses of congress. They and Obama get nearly everything they want. Jus sayin....
Maybe balanced by age, but not by much else.
Since you don’t have to be a member of the House, why not Sarah Palin? I haven’t heard her name mentioned once. That would send the political class into fits of rage.
Voting Republican is like dating someone whom you know is running around on you. And even worse, they do it with people you don’t like.
I think Ted Nugent would be an even better choice. :)
That would send the political class into fits of rage.
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Its the Republican base that should be showing fits of rage. Maybe then some things might change for the better.
Ryan, or any other liberal shill being made Speaker will result in even more discontent in the conservative base, lowering turnout in the 2016 election. Since the GOPe cabal doesn’t want to win anything, this is no doubt part of their calculations.
Do you notice how often they mention Paul Ryan’s kids?
One talking head today says his young kids are why he will not take it. He wants time for them, and the speaker job is all consuming. I hope she’s right
He’d take it. He’s a corrupt sellout like BooHoo. If he declines, it’s because he couldn’t win.
Just remember that you don't want the most articulate, most issues-adept conservative as Speaker -- Remember Newt and how the speakership muzzled him and tied him down.
You want a master parliamentarian who is ACU 100 material, who knows how to shut up Red Nancy and her orcs and move conservative legislation.
You want Newt and your other excellent grenade-throwers, your policy people, in other leadership positions. In the top three spots you want politicians who are conservative, not RiNO's who say they're conservative, and in the other posts you want people who sit in Congress and committee with brass knucks in their pockets, who are willing to take on Maxine and Nadler and Goofy Whatshername-Badhair.
That would be a good reason.
Wonder who told him, back then, that he didn't have to make time for his constituents, but needed to take all those "K" Street invitations to lunch?
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