Good Riddance

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he's not running for re-election this year and will leave Congress when his term expires in January. Republicans in the House of Representatives are already jockeying to see who will replace him in the next few weeks or months.

During the 2016 campaign, Ryan did speak out against Donald Trump a number of times and withdrew his endorsement. But once Trump was elected, Ryan's backbone dissolved and he deteriorated into a boot-licking toady who repeatedly groveled in front of the President. Both headed an equal branch of the government, but you'd never know that from the obsequious way Ryan acted.

The media postmortems on Ryan were quick and pulled no punches. My favorite is from Paul Waldman at The Washington Post who wrote an excellent piece with the stinging title of "A scam of a party says goodbye to its top fraud" (link here).

Trump may think Ryan's departure is good news because he thinks he's "winning" the Republican Party. The reality is that the GOP is a diseased, festering corpse of a party. Some prize.

Republicans in Congress are now panicking with Ryan's departure and some are not-so-privately saying to the media they'll lose as many as eighty seats in this fall's election. While that may seem unrealistically high, the chances of the Republican Party maintaining control of the House now seems tiny and even their chances in the Senate are growing clouded.

If a large blue wave comes, as many expect, and Democrats win a sizeable majority in the House and even possibly a small one in the Senate, Congress will make life holy hell for Trump. So he may think he's won with Ryan's departure, but this could be a case of Trump winning the battle but then badly losing the war.

Democrats now have the momentum. This is our chance to curb Trump by seizing congressional control from the GOP. The way to do that is making certain your voter registration is up to date and that you volunteer for a campaign in your state to bring this victory home.

And, of course, you must vote, and make sure everyone you know who's eligible does as well.