For the moment, the House Freedom Caucus guys are pretending they're still happy that they ousted John Boehner and got Paul Ryan for his replacement as House speaker, even after everything they wanted in a spending bill was rejected. They hate the spending bill, but aren't blaming Ryan. Yet. Here's Rep. David Brat (R-VA), the guy who took down former Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
"The end product here is just cleaning the barn; it’s a disaster," Brat said of the spending and tax deal. "We're breaking our pledge on the budget caps to the American people, we’ve lost fiscal discipline, and we’re throwing it all on the next generation."
But in the same breath, Brat praised Ryan: "Not only is he saying the right things, he is lining it up to do the right things … and then leadership can't hijack the budget at the end of the year and throw the kitchen sink, which we just did."
But how long can "leadership" be separated from Ryan, who Brat praised for being "credible on regular order" because he supposedly is talking to rank-and-file? Because in this spending bill, leadership shot down every effort from the Freedom Caucus to amend the spending bill. Every one, "from national security and abortion to environmental regulations." What's more, one of Ryan's team—Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA)—essentially attacked the maniacs in writing for not being team players.
"The vote that hurts our Conference is the no vote from a Member who hopes the bill passes, but relies on others to carry that load," Scalise wrote. "That vote isn't fair to the Members who shoulder the responsibility of voting yes, and it isn't fair to the Republican Conference as a whole."
That would be this spending bill, by the way, which the majority of the Freedom Caucus is going to vote against because they hate it. For now, they're saying this is still all Boehner's fault, despite the fact that Ryan and his team pretty much abandoned them and have put them on notice for being disloyal to their conference.
This honeymoon for Ryan isn't going to last a whole lot longer. The good news for the country is that it lasted long enough to do away with all of the opportunities the maniacs would have to shut down government for the next year.