Rat #46 Scuttles Off the Listing Ship of State

     The self-pitying sanctimoniousness of Paul Ryan's official resignation announcement was literally sickening. He didn't seek the job as House Speaker. He wasn't really resigning because of November's Blue Tsunami getting bigger and bigger on the horizon. And, of course, he wanted to spend more time with the Koch Brothers his family.
     And so ends one of the shortest House Speaker tenures in modern American history. It was remarkable for how much damage it had done to the American economy and the entire national landscape as a whole in such a brief period of time. As Joy Reid said on Twitter today, Paul Ryan will be known to posterity for two things- The ruinous tax scam cuts vigorously spearheaded by Ryan and for being a spineless weasel during the Trump administration.
     Right after the Access Hollywood tape came out on September 7th, 2016, Paul Ryan felt a dangerous onset of Sudden Spinal Emergence come on. Running for re-election himself, Ryan not only canceled plans to appear with Trump for the rest of the election season, he even stiff-armed Mike Pence, who had nothing to do with it and who was himself so horrified, he seriously considered dropping off the ticket two months before the election.
     But, like Pence, Ryan valiantly fought back that emerging spine, perhaps through surgical intervention, and put on a brave face whenever he was in Donald Trump's company again. He bravely kept up the pretense of partisan solidarity even as Trump was publicly insulting Ryan on Twitter. With the complete and utter absence of a spine, one could be forgiven for seriously theorizing the only thing keeping Paul off his stomach and in an upright position is a full back brace.
     So now beginneth the usual Republican piranha fight for the scraps that will no doubt be waged between House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who'd already been virtually rejected for the Speaker job, and noted homophobe Steve Scalise, the Majority Whip. I say "scraps" for a good reason. If after the midterms Mueller takes down both Trump and Pence simultaneously, according to the Rules of Succession, a Democratic Speaker would get the top job. Sound unlikely? Consider how unlikely it was that a Democratic insider bearing a two term president's name and with the Democratic establishment's, Super Delegates', Wall Street's and mainstream media's assistance would lose the last election to a thrice-married, fascist womanizing piece of shit like Donald Trump.
     And Ryan was actually #45. Number 46 on the Casualty List (Yes, there's actually a Casualty List maintained by the House Press Gallery) to announce their retirement was Dennis Ross, a Republican from Florida, who announced his own retirement to little if any fanfare just an hour later. Yet Ross' own departure will prove to be more notable than that, a bellwether of what will surely be a fresh wave of Republicans grabbing their umbrellas and sun block before that blue wave hits.
     In Ryan's district, he was facing stiff Democratic challenges from Randy Bryce and schoolteacher Cathy Meyers. On the Republican side? Paul Nehlen, another anti-semite in the same mold as Arthur Jones, running his own fascist, Quixotic campaign out of Chicago. Really, the only way that Bryce or Meyers could lose the seat to Nehlen is if they're both caught in bed with dead hookers and a pound of cocaine in a cheap roadside motel on Highway 66 and maybe not even that would stop the Democrats from vulturing Ryan's seat.
     So Ryan's essentially abdicating his seat to the Democrats and everyone knows it.
     Now, for every lickspittle, Republican invertebrate who announces their retirement, there's some last minute chance at redemption, some last-second appeal to Posterity to not be so harsh to them. That would be in expending their remaining political capital/hot air in blasting a ruinous administration for whom they'd carried water. Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker found their inner Blue Dogs by insulting Donald Trump and his increasingly irrational and mercurial policies. John McCain, perhaps sensing the end is near for him, as well, had begun before the election by withdrawing his endorsement of Trump just before the 2016 election.
     But Paul Ryan won't do that. Indeed, in his advance concession speech, he never once mentioned the Trump administration. Instead, he patted himself on the back and said he was proud of his accomplishments as House Speaker, such as the tax scam bill off of which the multimillionaire from Janesville, Wisconsin will profit handsomely. He never once stood up to Trump even when he mocked Third World countries as "shithole countries", threatened to pull us into nuclear war with North Korea (and China) and was hit with one raid and sex scandal after another.
     And while I don't agree with radical centrist and Hillary backer Joy Reid, I have to agree with her that posterity will remember Paul Ryan's tenure for a ruinous tax cut bill and not standing up to the most fascist "president" this nation ever had and likely ever will have even after he no longer has a political career to worry about.