WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) made several requests of the House Republican Conference when he agreed to run in the election to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-CA). The requests ranged from the conference agreeing to unite behind him and not threaten to have him removed, no loss of family time, a few procedural changes to how the House functions, and what he is calling a “deal-breaker” if he doesn’t get it.
“The HJ-a-day demand is non-negotiable,” Ryan told reporters over the weekend as he dined out a D.C.-area steak house. “I know this will be a stressful role for me,” Ryan further explained, “and I’m going to need to blow off a little steam, aren’t I? Am I not entitled to still get the handies I’ve come to expect in my life, just because I take on a more powerful and important role?”
The failed 2012 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee said that he can already tell how “hardcore stressed” he was going to be as Speaker by all the negative attention he has gotten from right-wing talk radio and other media outlets. “The Limbaughs, the Coulters, the Ingrahams of the conservative movement,” Ryan explained to reporters, “are all out for blood every day. They hate government so much, they don’t even like the guys who are elected time and again to tear it down, and they have crazy-high standards as to what is conservative enough for them.”
“The fact is that unless I come in as Speaker and get votes through that repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood, impeach Obama and put Hillary Clinton in prison,” Ryan said to the media between bites of his filet mignon, “then I will be likely tarred and feathered myself. The simple truth is that the conservative base in this country is rabid, and they don’t care about anything else but unraveling the government thread by thread, no matter how much damage to their fellow Americans it does.”
Ryan, when prompted by reporters, said that he is still “50/50” on whether he will do any compromising with Democrats. He said that he is “tempted to reach across the aisle” because he is “well aware that Obama will veto anything too right-wing” but that he is also “well aware that the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus will run me out on a rail if I even say ‘Democrats’ without appending it with ‘sucks’ or ‘belong in prison.’” Ultimately, Ryan says, he will decide “on a case by case basis just how much effort to put into solving a problem.”
“The simple reality is that right now my party is in extreme turmoil because we invested a lot of political capital encouraging the Tea Party to push us harder and harder to the right,” Ryan said as he got back to his meal, “and maybe deep down, I don’t want to be Speaker at all because I see it as being a doomed position until and unless the Tea Partiers are put back into the fundamentalist hell hole they crawled out of. So maybe my list of demands for the job was just my way of pissing off enough of the hardliners to sink my chances, and then I can blame them instead of my innate desire to be part of the elite, ruling class, but without having to really put my neck out there, or take responsibility for my actions.”
Ryan said that while getting hand-wrist copulation is “an absolute must” for him, he would be willing to “negotiate down” to just having someone look intently in his eyes while he “rubbed one out and did some gnarly leg lifts.”
