Discussion: Ryan Vows To Step Down As Convention Chair If Trump Asks Him To Do So

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82

I wonder just when it will become clear to Trump that at this point he needs the Republican Party more than they need him.

83

But make it more realistic … drape an empty suit over it.

84

@thunderclapnewman.

Is your avatar “the one hit british wonder” Thunderclap Newman (per wikipedia).
I never heard of him until I watched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

85

My avatar is a 1930’s illustration of Superman.

My screen name was the band’s name—the singer/guitarist/songwriter is Speedy Keane.

“There’s Something in the Air”

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86

Whatever trump wants eh? That includes kissing ass?

87

Gee - I took it as a threat not a kowtow. Trump would have to pick someone and turn the convention into amateur hour.

88

Let’s not forget, training for his next marathon!

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Yes, my mistake. Not your avatar - your screen name is what I meant,

90

Let’s aim a little higher, Plucky. It would be better if he got unceremoniously booted out of the speakership by the voters than by his caucus!

91

Ryan can’t disassociate himself from that shit show fast enough!

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In other words, “PLEASE LET ME OUTTA HERE! I’m BEGGING you!”

What “leadership” by Paul Ryan, huh?

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93

Ryan won’t be running for anything in 2020, other than for his life!

Remember, when he was on the ticket in 2012, Paul Ryan, like Mitt Romney, couldn’t even win his own hometown. Fact!

94

I really think it’s actually happening. I brashly predicted it in 2008, but it’s actually happening: the Republican Party is collapsing before our very eyes. It’s dying like the Federalists and the Whigs before it.

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95

Heh. Sarah, standing at the podium, screaming, “Do you know who I am?!”

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96

Ryan is setting the path for him to be the nominee. Mark my words.

97

Ryan would be delighted to get the fuck out of this task. He could spend more time working on his ideas for privatizing social security and medicare and evicting orphans and widows from the poor houses.

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98

I have said elsewhere that this feels to me like Ryan is clearing the way for his being named the nominee at the convention. He would have to step down as convention chair for that to be permissible.

99

Publicly embrace the hate.

I don’t think that’s Ryan’s message at all. If he wanted to embrace the hate, he wouldn’t be essentially begging to be let off the hook.

I think his message is, “God help me, I don’t want any part of this Trump shitshow, especially its embarrassingly overt racism, misogyny, bigotry, and hate. I’m OK with racism, misogyny, bigotry, and hate when they’re done with FoxNews-approved coded words and dog whistling, but this asswipe Trump is bringing it all out into the open with no filters.”

Sarah, standing at the podium, screaming, “Do you know who I am?!”

That would be glorious.

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100

the Republican Party is collapsing before our very eyes. It’s dying like the Federalists and the Whigs before it.

I don’t think the GOP is going to literally disappear; aside from California, it shows little signs of disappearance at the local and state level, unfortunately.

Trump does seem to be the catalyst accelerating the destructive effects of its internal contradictions at the national level. What seems to be pupating is a Republican Party centered in the south and rural areas, and ideologically dominated by three groups: Evangelical Dominionists, Bircherite/Glibertarian/TeaParty/Club for Growth cranks, and unapologetic white supremacists of various flavors. How long the John Boehners and the Jon Huntsmans and the Susan Collinses willingly co-exist with these loons will be interesting to see.

It would be interesting to look at just exactly how the Whigs and Federalist parties collapsed. Did the process start with the head, with the rot gradually affecting the local and state parties, or did the necrotizing start locally and work its way up to the head?

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I really kind of think it could happen. He could render the whole brand so toxic, and demonstrate the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the party that’s been apparent to those who cared to see for a long time now in such stark, bordering on comic, terms that no one wants to even be identified with the party. I don’t think they’ll just rebrand. Nor do I think they’ll die like the Whigs, giving a last, pathetic gasp of a convention that has delegates from only a handful of states that nominates another party’s candidate and goes home. But I can easily see a brief proliferation of parties of the right that eventually coalesce into a new opposition, maybe with some of the right most Democrats moving into it. Something like that happened after the Federalists died.

I mean, all the party’s national figures and office holders refusing to attend and the Speaker of the House refusing to chair it? How does a party recover from that? How do you recover the voters you alienate by snubbing their choice? And, in this case, why would you want to when you know all they’ll ever do is drag you down to defeat again and again?

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