GOP congressman: 'Things blow up every couple weeks around here'

The House of Paul Ryan is crumbling.

With each passing day, lame-duck Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) seems to be losing his grip on power as the GOP caucus careens from one crisis to another.

“Things blow up every couple of weeks around here,” lamented Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA), who’s among the nearly two dozen Republicans sprinting for the House exit door this year.

With embarrassing vote losses now piling up, Ryan, who announced in April he was quitting Congress next year, is under increasing pressure to step aside. And do it now.

“Ryan sought to quell infighting Tuesday, dashing back to Washington from Wisconsin and abandoning plans for family time at home, as he tried to unify the factions and reassert control over the majority,” the Associated Press reports.

On Tuesday, Ryan insisted he’ll remain Speaker and stressed that a party vote for a new leader right now would create a major distraction and unnecessary GOP turmoil.

But the fact is, the Ryan-related turmoil is already here and it’s only to drag on, week after week, month after month, for as long as he refuses to relinquish his Speaker title.

“Top Republicans in Congress and the White House have in recent days entertained a plan to push House Speaker Paul Ryan out of his post over the summer, in an effort to clear the way for his presumed successor, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, to assume the speakership,” the conservative Weekly Standard reported this week.

And on Tuesday, right-wing Republican House member Paul Gosar (R-AZ) became the first GOP party member to openly call for Ryan to step down.

Ryan appears to be naive if he thinks in the Trump era of chaos politics he can quietly maintain his lame duck title.

Despite enjoying it’s largest House majority in nearly a century, Republicans have been unable to accomplish much of anything legislatively under Ryan.

Last week Ryan suffered a stunning vote loss when the GOP-sponsored Farm Bill was voted down after conservatives, no longer fearful of Ryan’s status, joined with Democrats to defeat the bill.

Conservatives revolted because they’re angry that Ryan won’t allow a vote on a right-wing immigration bill.

At the same time, different Republicans are teaming up with Democrats to push a vote on a more moderate immigration bill. Ryan is blocking that effort, too, on behalf of the White House, which doesn’t want Trump put in the position of having to veto commonsense immigration legislation during an election year.

In terms of Ryan’s replacement, if the GOP continues to spin out and loses control of the House in November, which seems more and more likely, the whole issue is nulled. Because the next Speaker of the House will be a Democrat.