The man who lost his primary race this year against Rep. Paul Ryan by a nearly 85-point margin announced Wednesday that he will challenge the Wisconsin Republican for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Real America knows that D.C. lives in a bubble, and that the power players inside the Beltway are concerned with their own fortunes rather than with the plight of the American worker and middle class,” Paul Nehlen said in a statement made available to the Washington Examiner.
“Speaker Paul Ryan — a man who bends over backwards to deliver President Obama’s agenda — in the physical embodiment of Washington’s disregard for the American people,” the statement added.
Nehlen was aided this year in his campaign to unseat Ryan by talk radio and right-wing entertainers, including Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity.
The boost from talking heads did little for the Republican businessman’s electoral chances, however, as Ryan went on to win the Wisconsin primary in a landslide.
The speaker went home with 84 percent of the vote, while Nehlen managed to capture only 16 percent.
So great was his loss to Ryan, and his chances of wresting the speaker’s gavel from the Wisconsin congressman are so unlikely, that one GOP consultant said Wednesday the newly announced challenge is likely a scam.
“Guarantee you a SCAM PAC is at the heart of this,” said GOP consultant Nathan Wurtzel.
The latest challenge to Ryan is perfectly legal. The U.S. Constitution allows for the election of a non-member of the House of Representatives to be elected as its Speaker. On Wednesday, Nehlen argued he’s just the man for the job.
“Paul Ryan is the absolute last person who should be in charge of checking and balancing the executive branch of the federal government from the perspective of the federal legislature, and over the next few months we’ll have a conversation about the proper role of the Speaker of the House and what a real leader could do were he told to hold the Speaker’s gavel,” Nehlen statement concluded.
The Republican businessman, whose social media account regularly features interactions with self-identified members of the so-called alt-Right, has accused Ryan of being pro-open borders. Nehlen has also accused the speaker of making the U.S. vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Ryan is going to fund Hillary’s open borders and unvetted refugees. pic.twitter.com/LbESLTsgXG
— Paul Nehlen (@pnehlen) October 17, 2016
