Right Wing News Endorses Paul Ryan For Speaker If….

by John Hawkins | October 22, 2015 12:19 am

Those in the Freedom Caucus have done more for conservatives in Congress in the last month than anyone since Newt Gingrich.

[1]

First, they managed to drive John Boehner out of office. After that, they played a major role in stopping his lieutenant Kevin McCarthy from taking over and being John Boehner, Jr.. Furthermore, they were holding out for even more: rule changes that would help even the playing field for conservatives in Congress.

That’s why at first glance, it was disappointing that most of them seemed ready to support Paul Ryan. After all, Ryan is a diehard advocate of amnesty and publicly, everyone was saying that he would only become Speaker if everyone got on board beforehand and took the motion to vacate off the table, which would make it much harder to get rid of him.

That didn’t sound very appealing and so it was a big surprise that after a meeting with the Freedom Caucus, most of the members were willing to support him.

However, after details about the meeting leaked out, it all started to make sense. First, the The WAPO[2] reported that Ryan had agreed to abide by the Hastert Rule. That’s significant because it means he couldn’t push an amnesty bill unless the majority of Republicans in the House went along with it, which is extraordinarily unlikely.

Additionally, The Weekly Standard[3] said Ryan wanted changes to the motion to vacate, but didn’t actually want to get rid of it.

Then Breitbart[4] reported that Ryan actually caved to most of the rule changes that the Freedom Caucus wants.

Among the things that Ryan promised the members were a return to regular order, changes to the steering committee that decides committee assignments centralizing power in the Speaker’s office—Ryan even promised to give up the Speaker’s five votes on the committee—and an end to retaliation against Republican members who vote their conscience.

…Ryan’s spokesman Brendan Buck—a former Boehner staffer—hasn’t denied that Ryan made all of these promises, and several sources, including those in the meeting, have confirmed to Breitbart News that Ryan made them.

If all of this is true, then Right Wing News is willing to endorse Paul Ryan as Speaker because sometimes you have to take “yes” for an answer and those rule changes would be very consequential.

Is Ryan our first choice? No. But, he’s not a member of the current leadership team; so he does at least give the GOP a clean break from the failures of the last few years. Additionally, IF it’s true that he has agreed to these rule changes, it would be a significant step forward for conservatives in the House AND it would prevent him from doing anything that the majority of the GOP in the House doesn’t support.

The sad truth is that the candidates most conservatives would prefer don’t seem inclined to run or simply couldn’t win. Ryan can and IF he keeps the promises he’s made (and it won’t take long to find that out), the House would be significantly better off than it is today under John Boehner’s leadership.