Late Wednesday night the crazies were calmed—for now—Paul Ryan backed down—it won't be the last time—and House Republicans finally managed to browbeat
someone into replacing John Boehner as speaker of the House:
A strong majority of anti-establishment conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus voted on Wednesday night to support Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin for House speaker, assuring that he will have the votes to secure the post next week and averting a leadership crisis for Republicans.
One might say that the "averting a leadership crisis" ship had already sailed with the stunning resignation of Boehner because he could no longer deal with the Freedom Caucus, the crash-and-burn of Kevin McCarthy's bid to replace him and the days of outright begging by the party for Ryan to take this thankless job, but okay, crisis averted.
Then there was this:
“I’m grateful for the support of a supermajority of the House Freedom Caucus,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement, referring to the two-thirds vote he received.
... which is rather funny given that earlier in the day on Wednesday, Ryan had insisted he would not agree to take the job unless he had their full endorsement, but hey, he may as well get used to backing down to the most extreme elements of his party.
And the Freedom Caucus says that:
“While no consensus exists among members of the House Freedom Caucus regarding Chairman Ryan’s preconditions for serving,” the group said in its statement, “we believe that these issues can be resolved within our conference in due time.”
(This is where you pause to laugh and think, yeah, good luck with that.)
So Rep. Paul Ryan will soon be Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. And then he'll find out why John Boehner quit. Next up, the debt limit!