Paul Ryan can now add Speaker of the House of Representatives to the list of failures. His new position is a trap with no exit and in six to eight months he will realize the mistake he has made, but it will be too late.

Going with a loser for Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan

Representative Ryan has a history of association with failure:

• He joined Senator Bob Kasten staff as a legislative aide in 1992. A few months later Senator Kasten failed to be reelected.
• He was the speech writer for Jack Kemp, the Republican Vice Presidential candidate in 1996. The Bob Dole/Jack Kemp ticket lost.
• In 2012, Ryan was selected to be the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for Mitt Romney. He was noted to be the farthest from center of any Vice Presidential candidate, conservative or liberal, since at least 1900. The Romney/Ryan ticket lost.
• Ryan has been a Representative for Wisconsin since 1998. In that time he as sponsored over 70 bills of which only two have been enacted into law. He was successful in having a Post Office in his District renamed and he was able to have the excise tax reduced on arrow shafts.

Ryan has enjoyed comfortable wins in all of his election wins since 1998, although in 2012, corporations built him a $5.4 million campaign chest, (as of July 25, 2012,) the largest of any congressional candidate, and though he won with 55% of the vote in the district, he only garnered 44% of the vote in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. His district is 90% Caucasian, and has elected the Republican candidate for the last twenty years.

Ryan is also a disciple of Ayn Rand, a writer, philosopher, and playwright that was born and raised in Russia to a aristocratic family that fell from privileged life after the Russian Revolution. Her philosophy of Objectivism assumes that only the people who are currently successful should enjoy the spoils of life and everyone else should not have access to the opportunities of the privileged. This concept is eagerly accepted by the wealthy conservatives who fund campaigns of candidates that seek to substitute our nation’s founders concept of ‘All Being Equal’ with Ayn Rand’s philosophy of a society ruled by privilege.

“They (Native Americans) didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.”

Ayn Rand, 1974

There is no doubt that Ryan will continue to be loyal to the extreme right. He is immune to his record of failures in carrying the flag of conservative ideology. 

That makes Ryan the wrong person to put in charge of the House of Representatives. Former Speaker John Boehner was pushed into a corner by the House Freedom Caucus that has paralyzed the House. The Freedom Caucus is a anti-United States band of Representatives from rural districts of Caucasian majority, anti-education, ultra-religious, government-hating voters. The caucus has less than forty Representatives pushing an agenda that is sometimes racist, often disgusting, and always wrong.

Speaker Boehner failed to put this collection of misfits in their place and that led to his resignation. By not accepting the reality that Republicans are in the minority, and that by adding the House Freedom Caucus to gain a majority, Speaker Boehner allowed a third-party of Representatives to pull down the GOP to the level of political masturbation.

Enter Paul Ryan. Speaker Ryan will cater to the House Freedom Caucus which will continue to be a drag on the support of the Republican party. Eventually, Republicans will have to decide whether they can afford to be associated a party that creates a public image of clowns and buffoons. As the 2016 election approaches Speaker Ryan will likely be the leader of an angry mob of Republicans who will be fed up with the shenanigans of a handful of Representatives that he has allowed to ruin the party.

Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House 2015 to 2016.