Let's dispel with the fiction that Paul Ryan knows what he's doing. Ryan's leadership in the house is making John Boehner's handling of his fractious conference look masterful. In the same interview in which Ryan proved he should not be allowed anywhere near state secrets, Ryan distinguishes himself as singularly incapable of steering a key component of our government. But he's great at making excuses.
“You promised to repeal Obamacare for seven years. Your bill didn’t survive three weeks. What happened?” [Norah] O’Donnell asked.
“Well, it hasn’t survived yet. What happened is, we are going through, what I would call, a very painful growing pain. I’d like to see the growth at the end of that pain, which is we had been an opposition party for 10 years,” Ryan said. “And I’ve been long saying, if we’re going to be successful, deliver for the American people, improve people’s lives, we’ve got to become a proposition governing party. … About 90 percent of our members are for this bill. We’re not going to give up after seven years of dealing with this, after running on a plan all of last year, translating that plan into legislation, which is what this is.”
So what’s the Plan B?
“Plan B is we keep talking to each other and figure out how we get to yes, and how we get this bill passed,” Ryan said.
It hasn't survived yet? It's going to rise from the dead? Setting aside that bit of brilliance—this "growing pain" bullshit has got to end. Republicans have had seven years holding the House. That's plenty long enough to 1) come up with a healthcare plan, and 2) figure out how stuff in the government works, particularly in the legislative branch. Pushed on that, whether he's going to do the legislative work to come up with a bill, he just says "we keep talking," and he keeps putting on more pressure. "If we can make improvements to this bill," he says, "all the better." But he's okay with this bad bill, that needs improvement, if he can force it through.
And in the same interview, Ryan proved that he's not even trying to lead the House of Representatives. He's only interested in pushing through his extremist vision for America—party before country. He's telling popular vote loser Donald Trump to refuse to work with Democrats on health care. "I don't want that to happen," he said. "I don't want government running health care. The government shouldn’t tell you what you must do with your life, with your healthcare."
Ryan doesn't want government running anything except figuring new and creative ways to humiliate poor people and give more money to rich people.