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Thank you all for your thoughtful responses to my post #25. Judging by your responses, perhaps I did not state my point clearly enough. The Freedom Caucus should have stood firm at the beginning of the year during the vote for leadership, particularly the Speaker position. After what Ryan pulled during the election season last year, he should NEVER have been rewarded with the speakership again. He was and remains a disaster. To oppose him now, after they had already caved during the leadership elections, just compounds the disaster of making Ryan speaker again.

I wish the Freedom Caucus and others in the House who are dismayed at what happened would push for a new speaker, but that is not likely to happen.

We are stuck with a speaker who is not nearly as smart as he was portrayed to be when he was coming up through the ranks. We are stuck with a disloyal speaker who is out only for himself. We are stuck with a speaker who can't lead his way out of a paper bag. We are stuck with a divided House caucus that, trust me, now has real, possibly unbridgeable bitterness among its members. We are stuck with a Republican House caucus that has thumbed its collective nose at the President and handed him an unnecessary defeat that could cripple his presidency permanently.

To everything there is a season. There is a time to stand firm and a time to compromise. To take the longer view. To live to fight another day.

None of this would have happened if the more conservative members of the House had refused to back Ryan at the beginning of the year. I am heartbroken about the situation, because I don't know if the damage can be reversed. President Trump has been in office slightly over two months and has little to show for it thanks to the do-nothing congressional Republicans who can't get their act together.

thanks to the do-nothing congressional Republicans

No one wanted the Speaker job. I think Louie Ghomert finally threw his hat in the ring and got maybe 2 votes. It is painful to watch but the people have no representatives only those with the ability to pay the graft have a voice. As that most trusted voice in America used to say, "That’s the way it is" and he was a dagnabbed commie.

The Freedom Caucus should have stood firm at the beginning of the year during the vote for leadership

Perhaps, BUT remember that the others who were in the (viable) running for Speaker were just as bad if not worse. Remember also that it's not just the Freedom Caucus/ TRUE Conservatives in CONgress that choose the Speaker. There are actually more RINOs (many of whom falsely call themselves "Conservatives") than there are TRUE Conservatives. Sometimes when you're in the minority in your own Party, you are left with few choices and you have to pick the lesser of all evils. The "Swamp" that Trump needs to drain is just as full (actually, more so) with Republican RINOS as DimocRATS> Especially now since the Dims are in the minority.