Free Republic

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that he would absolutely not be drafted as a presidential candidate. As businessman Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich vie to win the GOP's nomination, many pundits had speculated that Ryan could have entered the fray during a brokered Republican National Convention in July. "I do not want, nor will I accept the nomination," Ryan said. "Period. End of story."

WASHINGTON — After a month of speculation and pleas ranging from the comic to the mildly desperate, Speaker Paul D. Ryan held an unusually formal news conference Tuesday afternoon to rule out once and for all, he said, his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. “Let me be clear,” Mr. Ryan said. “I do not want nor will I accept the nomination of our party.” He added that he had a message for convention delegates: “If no candidate has the majority on the first ballot, I believe you should only turn to a person who has participated in the...

House Speaker Paul Ryan will hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon to again definitively rule out a White House bid this year, according to an aide. Ryan will appear at the Republican National Committee's headquarters on Capitol Hill Tuesday at 3:15 p.m.

Politico’s Mike Allen remains confident that Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) could end up with the Republican president nomination for president in a brokered convention. In an interview with Hugh Hewitt this morning, Allen explained that Ryan was using the exact same political playbook that he used to become Speaker of the House. “We have him out there doing exactly what he did when he was running for Speaker and that’s making people want him, playing hard to get,” Allen said, pointing out a New York Times headline this morning describing Ryan as the “mirage candidate.” Ryan’s multiple denials of...

A new video released by House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 56% has reporters chattering about whether or not it serves as a subtle campaign ad, as his supporters continue to whisper his name as a potential Republican presidential nominee in a brokered convention. The video features footage from Ryan’s speech calling for a better brand of politics. That talk implicitly criticized Donald Trump’s brand of campaigning. The video is the latest of a series of web videos produced by his digital communications director Caleb Smith to highlight the Ryan brand of politics. Smith’s video includes multiple camera angles, a...

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said there's "potential" for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to be drafted as a presidential nominee at a Republican convention because he is the one person who could unify the party. "I think it's just natural that that speculation would happen because he's one of the great leaders here on Capitol Hill and one of the people who brings both sides, all sides together, I should say," Hatch told reporters Thursday.

And then there’s this other guy named Paul Ryan. Over on Capitol Hill, far from the madding crowd of rallies and racehorses, the newest speaker of the House of Representatives has been quietly reinventing the Republican Party by creating a new governing template. snip With a jaundiced eye, one notes that Ryan’s pro-people template seems rather well-timed for a contested convention and perhaps for unifying the party given the divisiveness and repulsion posed by Trump and, almost equally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Plainly, it would be dicey for party leaders to bypass Cruz or Kasich, but Cruz will lose in...

Charles Koch is confident House Speaker Paul Ryan could emerge from the Republican National Convention as the party’s nominee if Donald Trump comes up at least 100 delegates shy, he has told friends privately. Koch believes Ryan would be a “shoo-in” at a contested convention, should the campaign get to that point. Though Koch's wealth gives him significant influence within the Republican Party, it does not necessarily translate into skill in political prognostication. Still, he and his brother David are fond of Ryan. As a source close to the brothers told the Huffington Post, they appreciate the agenda he has...

In recent weeks, there has been increasing discussion about the possibility that House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)could emerge out of a brokered convention as the Republican nominee if the donor class is successful in denying Donald Trump the requisite 1,237 delegates. Just as Paul Ryan’s ascension to House Speaker represented a total repudiation of the GOP electorate by GOP lawmakers, Ryan’s selection as the Party’s nominee would similarly represent the donor class’s silencing of voters and voters’ views on immigration, trade, and foreign policy that have transformed the country and its role in the world. Regardless, many in the...

Radio host Hugh Hewitt took over the Salem Radio Web Network Monday morning, as Guy previewed this weekend. For his first guest, Hewitt invited House Speaker Paul Ryan to weigh in on his trip to Israel and those Republican convention rumors that suggest his name could appear on the ballot.Ryan was hesitant to comment on the convention rules, yet did say he believes the eventual GOP nominee should be someone who is actually running for the position. “You know, I don’t know, that’s not my decision," he said. "That is going to be up to the delegates. I’m going to be an...

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) in an interview on Monday rejected any interest in seeking the GOP presidential nomination. “I do believe people put my name in this thing, and I say, 'Get my name out of that,'” he said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show." "If you want to be president, you should go run for president. And that’s just the way I see it.

On the eve of the Wisconsin primaries, top Republicans are becoming increasingly vocal about their long-held belief that Speaker Paul Ryan will wind up as the nominee, perhaps on the fourth ballot at a chaotic Cleveland convention. One of the nation’s best-wired Republicans, with an enviable prediction record for this cycle, sees a 60 percent chance of a convention deadlock and a 90 percent chance that delegates turn to Ryan — ergo, a 54 percent chance that Ryan, who’ll start the third week of July as chairman of the Republican National Convention, will end it as the nominee.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) could be in prime position to run for president in 2020 if Donald Trump leads the GOP to a monumental collapse in November. With his youth and sunny, Reaganesque message, Ryan could be a formidable White House candidate in four years’ time, when the Republican Party may be searching for a safer standard-bearer after the roller coaster ride of 2016.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—All three of the remaining presidential candidates got the prime speaking slots Monday night at the annual AIPAC policy conference, to which we were not invited, alas, although that seems to have been somewhat epidemic. But any chance we get to hear Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, talk about foreign policy, the area in which Joe Biden literally laughed him out of the campaign in 2012, is one that we never should pass up. (Remember when Ryan explained to us that, in Afghanistan, it snows during the winter? Gravitas!) Of all the barefaced...

Former House Speaker John A. Boehner said current Speaker Paul D. Ryan should be the Republican nominee for president if the party fails to chose a candidate on the first ballot at its national convention this summer in Cleveland. SNIP Mr. Boehner, who stepped down from the speakership last fall, has long whispered to friends that he thinks Mr. Ryan could be the savior of the Republican Party. He told the crowd Wednesday that “anybody can be nominated” at the Republican National Convention. SNIP During the same question-and-answer session in Florida, Mr. Boehner referred to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas,...

Amid extraordinary Republican infighting over Donald Trump, the word from House Speaker Paul Ryan is nope, he's not running for president. The professed lack of interest from Ryan, R-Wis., came Friday in a letter from a lawyer representing him to the Federal Election Commission. The note by Timothy E. Kronquist disavows the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan, a political action committee that filed papers with the FEC on Thursday. "The speaker has not, and does not, explicitly or implicitly, authorize, endorse, or otherwise approve of the organization's formation or activities, and he is not involved with the organization in any...

In an election year set to break precedents, it is not impossible that the eventual Republican presidential nominee will be someone who is not even running for the office. That someone, of course, is Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman recently installed as speaker of the House after running as the party's vice presidential nominee in 2012.

Mitt Romney on Thursday night said that Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) should make his own run for president in 2016. "He's very generous. But I had my turn. It's his turn now," Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, said about his former vice presidential running mate. Romney made the comments during a joint interview with Ryan on Fox News — their first since the failed campaign. The two later appeared at an event in Chicago, where Romney quizzed Ryan about his new book, "The Way Forward." During the interview, they were asked who would make a better president. "I'll give it...

Can anybody unite a party that’s at war with itself? That’s the question Republicans are asking, and the answer might be former vice-presidential contender Paul Ryan, whose low profile amidst the intra-party squabbling suggests he is deftly positioning himself as Speaker in waiting or the GOP’s last best hope for 2016—either way a Hobson’s choice given the demoralized state of the party. Ryan wrote the budget that balances in 10 years, and that helped bring Congress to its knees, unable to find the votes to pass any of its traditional priorities, a farm bill or a transportation bill, much less...

Des Moines, Iowa — Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, will headline a prominent Republican dinner in Iowa this fall, a visit that is sure to stoke talk of a potential presidential bid. According to Iowa governor Terry Branstad, Ryan will deliver the keynote speech at the governor’s birthday party in November. Last year, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida spoke at the event. Branstad, in an interview at his capitol office, says he’s excited to welcome back Ryan to the Hawkeye State. “He’s a key player in the House and I like him a lot,” he says. “I enjoyed...