Paul Ryan has agreed to be speaker of the House, so long as the members of his own party take a solemn oath that they won’t fire him. There is an interesting dynamic in all of this, leaving this pundit to wonder whether there is any way out, for the Republicans, and, more importantly, any way the country can avoid the coming train wreck that may result from this chaos.
There is a seldom acknowledged fact that must be borne in mind when considering this shutdown nonsense. The members of the “Freedom caucus” don’t want the government to shut down, or at least they don’t want it to shut down for more than a few days. If it did, their constituents that expect their social security checks, etc., would be seriously inconvenienced when they discovered that the shutdown their Congressman has been talking about, which they heartily supported because of him and Fox News, actually adversely affects them, rather than just them. No, the Congressional crazies want the government to chug along, but they need for it to appear that it is doing so over their dead bodies. For them, the fact that they are members of the majority party is a serious inconvenience, because at one and the same time they need a Speaker who will keep them from getting what they keep saying they want, and one they can castigate for doing just that. It was so much easier when that person was Nancy Pelosi. Now, that person must be a Republican, upon whom they rely to protect themselves from themselves, but against whom they must also take up arms.
So don’t expect the “Freedom caucus” to agree to Ryan’s terms. Every revolution eats its own, they say, and the caucus is still hungry. They are looking for someone stupid enough to volunteer to be the next sacrificial lamb, and credible enough to garner the votes of the not so crazy Republicans (they purportedly do exist) in the House. There are a lot of stupid people on the R side of the aisle, but not many that fit those specs. Ryan is a con artist, but he’s not that dumb. The problem for the rest of us is that since the person who fits the bill may not exist, we may have no way to avoid a disastrous shutdown. The nutcases may get what they say they want, despite themselves.
UPDATE: Boy, was I wrong. Ryan is apparently that stupid.
UPDATE II: Maybe Ryan isn’t that stupid. In any event, I think my analysis of the problem stands. What the “Freedom caucus” needs is Speaker Pelosi.
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