Ryan’s long-rumored retirement was announced today, surprising a few people but shocking nobody. Rumors that he was going to quit had been swirling since the tax bill was passed.
Everyone is assuming that he quit because of the pending electoral catastrophe the Republican are facing, and he’s planning on getting a grotesquely overpaid position with one of the more rapacious corporations and watching from a sunny dacha somewhere as his former country collapses like a World Trade Tower. Given his general Randroid viciousness, that’s not a bad guess.
But it seems to me that he’s playing a longer game. I’m guessing he still wants to run America by his own Randian principles, and is angling toward doing that.
Resigning by November divorces him from his own tax bill, and the fantastic damage it will do. Trump, in his narcissistic mania, was more than happy to take credit for it. Ryan has worked his heart out to make Ryan’s life-long plan to turn America into a thin scum of John Galts heaving atop a sea of impoverished and dispossessed peons. He knows people will be in a murderous rage once they see the results, and he’ll be more than happy to blame Trump and attack him for the vast deficits that he’ll claim are why Americans are impoverished.
If that strikes you as fantastically cynical and self-serving, then you just don’t know Republicans.
Ryan might spend the last six months before the election leading the impeachment of Donald Trump. There is an electoral tidal wave coming, and Ryan is smart enough to know that if he positions himself as “a mainstream Republican” who is trying to undo the damage Trump has done, he might improve his standing with the public, along with that of his party, by destroying the monster he helped to create, and pretending to fight the economic ruin he devoted his whole life to creating.
The reason this might not work? Trump, who is far too erratic and volatile, and has far too much power he can misuse. He might destroy everyone’s plans, even those of his fellow sociopaths.
