Paul Ryan is retiring*. He is currently the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he is fairly young and he doesn't look ill**. He states that he wants to spend more time with his family. But that excuse is believed only of female politicians.
Why is he really retiring? His party is in power everywhere, his party can do anything they wish, including ignoring democracy, and his party is now responsible for everything that happens. Why wouldn't Ryan want to be one of the most powerful macho men in the universe? Why wouldn't he want to create the kind of fundamentalist-capitalist paradise his people dream about, a mixture of the power of the almighty conservative god and the power of the almighty dollar?
Nobody is willing to say why he is really retiring, or at least taking a break, at this point in time. It could be that he needs to isolate himself from Donnie the Deranged for a year or two, before running again to take Donnie's throne. He could watch from far the collapse of the Republican Party in the midterms and then get back in the saddle.
That explanation assumes something which may not be true: That Trump is too deranged for a sufficient number of former Republicans who might therefore vote for a Democratic candidate even in safe red districts.
But the reverse explanation is equally possible: He may have been told that he will not win another term because his voters have become so extremist that they are now holding arms or merging with the Alt Right. Yes, perhaps the pretty extreme Paul Ryan is now not deranged enough for the new Trump Party.
The capitalist wing of the Republican Party and the fascist-religious wing of the Republican Party might be fighting for supremacy. Ryan is the scion of the former, and other than as a source of all the funding, the appeal of a party which works only for the one percent may be dying. That appeal is replaced by something pretty frightening: A party for Aryan men and the families they rule.
Okay. That last paragraphs was courtesy of my own private nightmares. But not knowing the exact reason why so many rats are leaving the sinking ship is worrisome. Is it because the ship indeed is sinking? Or is it because the current rat population is replaced by a more voracious and meaner population, driving away the old incumbents?
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* This post is entirely based on my own amateurish but divine opinions. It's fun, for a change, to write something which does not involve an eternity of tedious research first.
** On the other hand, he does look like a cute Mickey Mouse:
