Okay, fine. Republican dream boy Paul Ryan will graciously accept the title of speaker of the House and even do some of the work associated with it,
as long as his conditions are met. Those conditions: He requires the endorsement of three key Republican caucuses—the Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Group, and the Tuesday Group. He requires changes to and perhaps the abolition of the motion to vacate the chair, the procedure for removing the speaker that Republican extremists had been trying to use against current Speaker John Boehner. And he won't abandon his family to travel the country fundraising as much as previous speakers have had to.
And if Ryan doesn't get all those promises, he'll walk—or rather, stay in his current role as chair of the Ways and Means Committee. That means that if you're a House Republican who doesn't want total chaos as every shrimp with ambition jumps into the speaker's race, you basically need to give Ryan what he wants. The question is, though, whether House extremists—particularly the ones in the Freedom Caucus, which has its own candidate in Rep. Daniel Webster, who is not dropping out—really care about avoiding chaos. Even if chaos does hurt their party.
Ryan's demand on the motion to vacate the chair is going to be a major sticking point:
"How does giving Paul Ryan more power solve the problem of John Boehner having had too much power?" asked Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a Freedom Caucus member. "Every organization has a way to remove its leaders."
Ryan met with the leaders of the Freedom Caucus on Tuesday and is
meeting with the Republican Study Committee Wednesday morning. He's expected to meet with the full Freedom Caucus this week, and at least one member says he's
willing to hear more about Ryan's demands on the motion to vacate, because, "Maybe there’s some procedural change he wants that maintains the motion to vacate." But the same member, Rep. Justin Amash, also told a reporter that "I don't think a speaker candidate should set preconditions."
The vote for speaker will reportedly be held on October 28, which gives Ryan a short window to corral the votes of the Freedom Caucus. The members of that group, meanwhile, will be under huge pressure not to spike this. Then again, they seem to love to get in the way of what the rest of their party wants, so they have experience standing up to pressure. If they do, it's popcorn time for the rest of us.