With the demise of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Cali.) bid for Speaker of the House, many on the right–including Erick Erickson, Mitt Romney, and Speaker Boehner–are calling for the 2012 vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to jump in the race as the only man they claim can unite the very fractured Republican Party.
Ryan’s cons greatly outweigh his pros: he policies are often ill-conceived and unrealistic and it has been years since any thoughtful conservative has viewed Ryan as a principled standard bearer of the movement.
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The famed Ryan Budget, which originally in 2008 planned out a fiscal road map for America to the year 2083, was as ludicrous as someone in 1925 mapping out the economy of 2000. The budget was so disliked by the American people that Republicans lost a safe House seat in upstate New York in 2011 because Democrats campaigned against the Ryan plan.
In his 2012 attempt, the congressman proposed a roadmap to balance the budget by 2040 and then just two years later he figured out a way to balance the budget by 2023. Both plans went nowhere.
His 2014 plan with Sen. Patty Murray earned the ire of many conservative from Heritage Action to Joe Scarborough because the budget increased spending and taxes–which they described as fees, for the promise of future budget cuts that never came.
It shouldn’t seem shocking at all that the Murphy-Ryan budget awarded no victories to conservatives, because the former vice presidential nominee has never been on the side of smaller government outside his stump speeches and the whimsical fantasies he has about overhauling the social safety net.
When conservatives needed the votes to stop or halt big government, Ryan stood on the side of big government.
He voted in favor of Medicare Part D, TARP, the auto industry bailout, repeatedly extending unemployment insurance, No Child Left Behind, repealing the sequestration cuts, the Trade Promotion Authority, repealing country of origin food labeling, the NSA’s blanket collection of phone records, CISPA, and raising taxes to pay for unions affected by TPP.
The Wisconsin congressman is also a fervent supporter of amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Even liberals joke about the congressman’s big government record.
“If you know about Paul Ryan at all, you probably know him as a deficit hawk. But Ryan has voted to increase deficits and expand government spending too many times for that to be his north star,” wrote liberal columnist Ezra Klein.
A Ryan Speakership will be John Boehner 2.0: more years of expanded government, conservatives being undercut in negotiations, and the advancement of liberal causes.
It shouldn’t matter if Ryan wants to be Speaker. Conservatives shouldn’t let him or want him.
