Thread: GOP Rep: Paul Ryan ‘Does Not Have My Vote’; Trump Gave Congress a Mandate, Ryan Gave

GOP Rep: Paul Ryan ‘Does Not Have My Vote’; Trump Gave Congress a Mandate, Ryan Gave a ‘Constitutional Crisis

by JULIA HAHN
11 Nov 2016
Washington D.C.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie says Speaker Paul Ryan does not presently have his vote for House Speaker. Massie further indicated that if no conservative steps up to run to fill Ryan’s job, he’d be open to doing it himself.

“We need change,” Massie explained. “If it came to that, I would do it.” Massie said in a podcast with Reason’s Nick Gillespie, “In just a few days [November 15th] there’ll be the nomination, and the constitutional election will happen of January 3rd. Presently Paul Ryan does not have my vote.”

When Gillespie pressed him on whether he would run to fill Speaker Ryan’s job himself, Massie said: “Somebody has to. I’m not saying I will do it, but we need change. I would rather give my vote to somebody who will support the platform” that upholds regular order.

The nation is facing “a constitutional crisis… thanks to Paul Ryan,” Massie explained:

"The next Speaker needs to let Congress debate whether we should be involved in all these military conflicts. We’ve got a constitutional crisis right now thanks to John Boehner and thanks to Paul Ryan, where we’re involved in military conflicts around the globe that have not been authorized by Congress, and these are not short term conflicts."

While Massie noted that his own opposition to Ryan’s Speakership stems largely from procedural issues rather than specific policies, other conservative lawmakers have expressed concern that Ryan’s policy agenda, as well as his demonstrations of poor leadership throughout the election season, have made him unfit to run the Republican party in Congress.

In particular, some lawmakers have pointed to Ryan’s efforts to seemingly undermine Trump’s campaign. Last month, Congressman Mark Meadows said that a lot of conservatives “question the loyalty of the Speaker” in light of Ryan’s treatment of Trump and said that the push to remove Ryan as Speaker was “picking up some steam.”

Moreover, on particular policies, while Ryan himself has acknowledged that Trump has “earned a mandate” from the American people, Trump was given a “mandate” to enact policies that stand in direct opposition to Ryan’s personal agenda on pivotal issues like trade, immigration, and crime.

For instance, Trump ran on a platform of immigration controls, whereas Ryan has been an active champion of open borders. According to Pew polling data, 92 percent of the GOP electorate oppose Ryan’s vision for expanding immigration levels and instead want to see immigration levels frozen or reduced.

Similarly, Trump ran against globalist trade policies, whereas Ryan supports the multinational trade policies backed by the Republican Party’s donor class. Ryan even worked as President Obama’s “partner” to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. According to polling data from a recent POLITICO Pro-Harvard survey, 85 percent of GOP voters disagree with Speaker Ryan’s vision on the issue of trade and believe that so-called “free trade” has lost the U.S. more jobs than it has created.

Massie told Gillespie that, while he was not initially a Trump supporter, he “decided to get on the Trump train” after he became the party’s nominee.

“Trump may have been the only one [of the 17 Republican candidates] on that stage who could win Pennsylvania and Michigan while not losing Florida. And it’s got some interesting ramifications for the Republican party,” Massie said. Trump’s victory “represents an implosion of the Republican party and maybe a realignment.”

Massie continued:

"There has been a religion in the Republican Party and it’s called free trade and if you did anything to question some of the trade deals you immediately got branded as a protectionist… there’s always sort of been this holier-than-thou, “you’re a protectionist” if you start talking about the rules of trade… [But] Trump captured Pennsylvania, and Michigan and Ohio—the Rust Belt, if you will—by talking about this issue and challenging some of those assumptions."

Indeed, by running against Speaker Ryan’s agenda on trade, immigration, and crime, Trump was not only able to win the presidential election (which Ryan was unable to do when he was on the GOP ticket), but he was also able to win Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin (which Ryan was also unable to do when he was on the GOP ticket).

Trump now “has a mandate,” Massie said — particularly on the issue of immigration and building a wall along the southern border. Massie explained that if Congress were to get in Trump’s way on this issue, he believes “the next stage will be pitchforks and torches in Washington.”

"I think there are a couple things that Trump has to do and if he doesn’t do these things, or if Congress gets in the way of him doing these things, the next stage will be pitchforks and torches in Washington D.C. One of those things is repeal and replace Obamacare… The other thing I think… is I think he’s got to start building a wall. He’s got a mandate there… he said he was going to build a wall, he got elected with over 300 electoral votes and I think it’s going to start happening or else some people are going to be very upset."

In recent days, Ryan has ducked answering questions about whether he will now champion Trump’s proposed border wall along the southern border. Ryan has also not said whether, in light of Trump’s “mandate,” he now recants his former statements denouncing Trump’s plan to enforce immigration law and allow ICE officers to do their job by removing individuals in the country unlawfully.

“I was not surprised [when Trump won],” Massie said. “And let me tell you something that really insults me and most of middle America: is when the media keeps calling it a stunning upset. How can it be a stunning upset if fully half of the country thought that he could or would win? It’s not a stunning upset. What’s stunning is their inability to get outside of their bubble and see that he could win—and that’s not even stunning that’s just par for the course.”

For his part, Ryan seemed to express surprise in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, declaring: “Donald Trump heard a voice out in this country that no one else heard.”

By “no one else,” Ryan seems to be referring to beltway elites and party insiders, including himself, who failed to listen to the people’s desires on some of the most seminal issues addressed during the election and who instead championed open borders trade and immigration policies opposed by the Republican and American electorate.

It is unclear whether the House Freedom Caucus, led by Jim Jordan, will support Ryan and allow him to remain as the Republican leader in Congress given the fact that Ryan stands opposed to roughly 9 in 10 GOP voters on the key issues of immigration and trade.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...tional-crisis/

By “no one else,” Ryan seems to be referring to beltway elites and party insiders, including himself, who failed to listen to the people’s desires on some of the most seminal issues addressed during the election and who instead championed open borders trade and immigration policies opposed by the Republican and American electorate.

Ryan has been Obama's buddy...IMO

President Trump and the New Republican Party...

RYAN HAS TO GO AND THE REST OF THEM WHO GET IN THE WAY!

by NEIL W. MCCABE
11 Nov 2016
Capitol Hill
1,016 comments


The chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus and one of the first men to come out against Speaker John A. Boehner told Breitbart News that he does not think Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R.-Wis.) has the votes to keep his gavel.

“I just don’t think he has the votes,” said Rep. Timothy A. Huelskamp (R.-Kansas), who lost his primary Aug. 2 and returns to private life after this session of Congress.

Huelskamp said he is concerned that the House Republican leadership is in a hurry to, first, get itself rubber-stamped inside the conference and then to proceed with an aggressive lame duck agenda.

Many House conservatives have called for the leadership elections to be moved forward from the scheduled Nov. 15 event, he said.

It is important to watch what the GOP leadership does before returning Ryan, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, and Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to their posts, he said.

The conference elections are by voice vote, which masks the weakness of Ryan’s support with House Republicans and could be chaotic if and when he fails to reach the required 218 votes when the new Congress meets.

“There is no doubt Ryan has the support of the majority of the conference, but we will not find out if he has enough until January,” he said.

“You got to have 218,” the congressman said. “Just because you have 215 doesn’t get you 218.

Huelskamp said he does not know who could possibly emerge as a rival to Ryan, but that also does not matter because the House rules do not require an opponent for someone to lose; all that is required is the 218 threshold.

“I was surprised over the years that when Boehner was on the ropes, no one would step forward,” the congressman said. “Paul Ryan? He wanted it and he got it.”

It was also a surprise to Huelskamp that the chairman of the House Finance Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R.-Texas), a former chairman of the House GOP Conference, never made a run for it.

“Hensarling was always the guy that I thought would do it, could do it, and would have had the votes,” he said. “Hensarling loves his job, but he knows the leadership will never let him take on Dodd-Frank.” Dodd-Frank is the financial services reform legislation, Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Kansan said that, in the lame duck session itself, he expects to see two bills come up that no one is expecting—the Internet Sales Tax and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, negotiated by President Barack Obama with our Pacific trading partners.

Before the current recess, the speaker led House Republicans to believe that he would not push for the TPP deal, but Huelskamp said if you read between the lines, Ryan actually left the door open. “He said it was not good enough, it needs to be renegotiated–it needs this, it needs that–but, he did not say: ‘We are not going to do it.'”

For six years, Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to pass an Internet Sales Tax that would circumvent the 1992 Supreme Court Quill Decision, which ruled that the Quill office supply company was not obligated to collect sales taxes for states other than the state in which it was located.

Huelskamp said there is an Internet Sales Tax bill all ready to go, written by the staff of the House Judiciary Committee and supported by the GOP leadership.

The tax bill is set to be sprung without warning, he said. “No discussion before we went home. No discussion of that at all, not on the agenda–sounds like a typical insider lame duck deal.”

For his own swansong, the congressman said he is ready to make a privileged motion forcing a vote on the impeachment of the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

In September, Huelskamp and his fellow member of the House Freedom Caucus Rep. John Fleming (R.-La.), a candidate for the Senate, were ready to make the motion, but the night before they had planned to execute the plan he announced that they would wait until after the election. One of the reasons House Conservatives were counting on Huelskamp and Fleming was that both men were leaving the House at the end of the session and would be immune from retribution from the House Republican Leadership.

Because the motion is a privileged motion, it must be voted on at once without debate or amendments, but Capitol Hill sources have speculated to Breitbart News that leadership looks to table the motion either in a vote or decision by the presiding officer.

Huelskamp said it was not his decision to stand down, but he went along with it because other conservatives begged him not to go through with it owing to the extreme pressure they were receiving from the leadership.

“I was strongly discouraged by House Freedom Caucus members, who said, ‘Now is not the time–we’ve got an understanding with Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP leadership.'”

It was all at the last minute, he said. “I thought it was a mistake not to do it, but I didn’t do it out of respect for those who have to deal with Paul Ryan.”

A part of him suspects that the real reason members of the House Freedom Caucus lost their nerve was that they were afraid they would win, he said.

Regardless of the deals made in September, Huelskamp said he is making the motion for impeachment, when Congress returns from its current recess and before Congress leaves for its Thanksgiving recess.

The congressman, who holds a PhD in agricultural legislation, said he has not decided if he will run for Congress again after his term ends. He is convinced he was right on the issues, but he could not overcome the $2 million from outside the district that overwhelmed the voters beyond his own ability to get his message through.

“I am not sure what I am going to do.”

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presid...ave-218-votes/