republican house speaker

breaking news, paul ryan isrunning for house speaker, which will preempt most of what iprepared to say for the segment. so let's see what happens.yesterday, prior to this tiny breaking news slice, he said hewould consider running for house speaker, but he had a number ofcaveats, a number of rules, that the house freedom caucus,the secretive, shadowy organization of nutjobs, wouldhave to agree to, that they would have to support him 80%,overwhelmingly. he would need time off, he would need theirinsurance that they would change

the rules so they couldn't takehim out midsession or speakers going forward, and he wouldrefuse the idea that he would not raise the debt ceilingwithout attaching it to a substantial entitlement reform.he said i will run if you agree to all those things. now we know he is running --does that mean they agreed to them? not so much. it does not look like theydid. they did not say they would support him as a block becausethey are crazy people, they need

80% to have an official endorsement,but he clearly has most of them. we have the numbers. this wasearlier today -- he said he would run if 80% supported them, they did not,but now he is running. this is a member of the caucussending a message to paul ryan -- they had laid out therequirements he was responding to. so if you pull back on all ofthose things you said -ã± we have called your bluff, back off,boy, if you run anyway we will let you run. effectively that iswhat they are saying. we have a

video, let's jump to video 5,responding to some demands. they are demands, notconditions, and i was surprised. this is a serious job, and it isa person who is only two heartbeats away from thepresidency, and you walk in and say here is a list of mydemands? what paul ryan said mystified many of us. i think hewas being honest when he said he didn't want the job, but this isnot a 9 to 5, monday through friday job. it is a lot morethan that. he has to make sure how he is different than johnboehner. john boehner has lost

his job, he is on the way out,we all understand that, he did some good things but he is doneas speaker. paul ryan was at his right hand the whole time. how willyou do things differently? it looks like he does not wantthe job and that will play heavily in my mind. i want somebody who wants thejob. i did not notice the firsttime i watched it, they had already denied him all hisrequests but one -- they had not mentioned at that point notdoing the weekend fund-raising

and having time for his family.but there he slipped in, this is not a monday through friday,9 to 5 job. so paul ryan is running and has apparently, withthe evidence we have so far, gotten nothing that he askedfor. that's right. let me see ifanything new has happened since this came up. but yeah, keep inmind those guys, the freedom caucus is not the whole --they can mess stuff up but it is not the majority of republicansin the house. if you have something like 200

republicans in the house, thatis a good chunk. john boehner learned if youdon't have those guys you can't get anything done, evenstuff of republicans now would i think be happy with. but overall i have to say thatwhile i don't know who is in the freedom caucus necessarily,because they refuse to be open about it, they are a wily bunch.because paul ryan i thought made a good move by saying you guysneed me so badly, i can pretty much ask for whatever i want,and then he put it on them to

either accept his demands or gowith somebody from florida that no one has ever heard of. thenthey flipped it right back on him and said we will supportyou, and you have to choose or deny. they gave himnothing and he folded. and i honestly believed thatperhaps he was not as ambitious as i thought he was afew years ago and he did not just genuinely want theposition for the sake of being the speaker, but he woulddo it only with these caveats. and now he is running.

we don't know. the fact is amajority of them, 67%, so roughly 27, more or less, 27 orso of those guys, he has their support. so if he has 27 ofthose guys, then maybe he has enough of -- maybe he has 27 votes for thethings that he wants to do. so you think they might beputting up a strong face -- it is not inconceivable thatthere is a wedge in the crazy wing of the republican party,with 40 members of congress running essentially dictatingeverything the house does with

435 members. i see the creation of thehouse freedom caucus earlier this year as the wedge.apparently a group of 40 had become so crazy that they neededsegregate themselves to ensure the purity of the craziness fromthe other crazies. i don't know. but the fact is,republicans have, what, 247 republicans, about 205republicans who are not in the caucus who desperately, most ofwhom, want paul ryan. so it is not like he is just listening tothese guys, he is listening --

those guys are there too, andmaybe 20 of them are like, i've got it, paul. it is insanity that he is -- but some of these guys mayhave thought the longer we let this go on, this becomes aserious problem. we look terrible and god knowswho we will get. they are not beyond notunderstanding that, and by the way privately maybe they haveconvinced them, we are not giving it to him, we couldrevolt. we may go through this

again, let's see how he does,let's move this chapter on. i have no idea but we don't knowyet, we will have to wait and see what assurances he gotto decide to run. i think it is your lasttheory, i think they are saying no, he will still do it, theyread him accurately. we will treat him like we treated johnboehner, and if he doesn't shut down the government every timesomebody blinks we will get rid of him. he walked right into it.unless there are behind closed doors deals that they gave himwhat he wanted -- and this is

no liberal, no moderate. he wasraised on ayn rand. he will be a disaster, and especially whentheir core issues seem to be economic issues of wanting tocut social security, medicare, medicaid, wanting to not raisethe debt ceiling regardless of their own spending plans -- combining that with paul ryan iscertainly better than some options, but it is not good foramerica i think objectively. there was no upside here foramerica. but thank god we will have the opportunity to votethese guys out of office in

november. except we won't. why? because it is rigged. thereare 247 republicans, we should be beating 120 republicans and50 democrats should lose. that will not happen.