For a few hours Monday afternoon, the political world was buzzing with the news from Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) that the "rumor mill" among House Republicans was that Speaker Paul Ryan was going to retire and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), currently Majority Whip would take over. Ryan's spokesperson AshLee Strong issued a denial:
"The speaker is not resigning," Strong told CNN, CBS and The Washington Examiner. Strong did not immediately respond to TPM's request for comment. […]
Late last year, Ryan's office also had to deflect rumors that he was planning to retire, which were perpetrated by reports from The Huffington Post and Politico that said Ryan wanted to serve as speaker through the end of his term and then leave Congress altogether.
For his part, Scalise had his office issue a statement saying Scalise "is proud to serve alongside Speaker Ryan, and fully supports him to remain speaker." Just to make sure that word didn't get back to Ryan that all this rumor milling wasn't coming from him.
Seems that while the Speaker is away in Prague, the Freedom Caucus mice will play in local news interviews. Amodei told the the Nevada Newsmakers that he was hearing Ryan was going to leave in the next few months, and had already tapped Scalise. To stir things up a bit more, he added "Now that is interesting, because no one has talked to members on how they are going to vote. […]
Now, maybe they have talked to all of the members but me. I don't know, so that is the rumor mill from last week."
Maybe Ryan ought to hotfoot it back home before the maniacs stage a coup. He might also want to get home to meet with the high school students who are spending their spring break marching the 50 miles from Madison to Janesville, his hometown, to talk to him about guns. He probably won't.
