You'll Never Please Them Speaker Ryan

Just when Speaker Ryan was probably thinking he'd mollified them with another symbolic vote to repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood, the Republican lunatic caucus in the House speaks up to remind him that he's on a short leash.

"It's too early to judge the speakership of Paul Ryan and I think it is fundamentally unfair to try and judge the speakership of Paul Ryan over the last month or so. But, as I have also said, the honeymoon is over," said Labrador, an Idaho Republican. "I think he needs to start putting up real conservative reform in the House and doing the things that are necessary to show the voters that he is a different speaker than John Boehner because frankly, everything he has done so far is no different than what John Boehner would have done."...

He added, "The question is will Ryan be a good speech-maker or a good policy-maker...The question is not just can you deliver on the speech but can you deliver on the substance. The question is whether the Republican party is a conservative party or not. I'm afraid that so far we've shown that [the Republican Party] is not a conservative party."

The implied threat contained in the statement, "everything he has done so far is no different than what John Boehner would have done," is crystal clear. Labrador wants Ryan to know that unless they get what they want, they'll do the same thing to him that they did to Boehner.

But if Ryan was actually paying attention for the last few years, what he'll also know is that the lunatic caucus is famous for making unreasonable demands that no one in their right minds would ever go along with - and they don't have a majority of votes in the House to get what they want. The only thing they DO have is the ability to threaten to blow shit up. Eventually Speaker Ryan will face the same thing Boehner did - you'll never please them. And then what?

It's too bad that a Republican Speaker can't/won't tell these lunatics to bugger off. But then, that's exactly the same problem the Republican establishment is facing with the candidacy of Donald Trump, isn't it? They created this monster as an alternative to actually governing after the 2008 election and it just keeps turning on them.