Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is, again, shutting down rumors that Speaker Paul Ryan will emerge as a consensus candidate at the Republican convention in July, asserting on CNN’s State of the Union that this is very unlikely to happen.
“If anything like that were to happen, which I think is highly, highly unlikely, I think our candidate is someone who’s running, OK? That’s pretty obvious,” he said during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
The RNC chairman, a close friend of Ryan, praised the speaker as someone who “doesn’t seek out these things” and was not interested.
“He doesn’t want to do it. And I know Paul very well,” Priebus insisted
“He’s one of the unique people in Washington where, you know, his ego is, like, not even there,” he said. “And he’s not selfish. And he doesn’t think like that.”
Priebus said that the Republican nominee for president is more likely to be someone currently running for president, citing a complete lack of floor operation from the shadowy group of insiders floating the option of Ryan as the nominee.
“Paul’s not going to do that,” he said. “So, my answer is no. But, clearly, there’s a lot of information out there that people are spreading around to cause a lot of confusion,” he said.
Ryan himself dismissed the idea during an interview with Hugh Hewitt this morning, urging his backers to stop floating his name for consideration.
“I do believe people put my name in this thing, and I say get my name out of that,” he said.
He added: “I think you need to run for president if you’re going to be president, and I’m not running for president. So period, end of story.”
Ryan’s press secretary AshLee Strong was even more vocal this morning on Twitter:
Guys – 2016 has already been silly enough. This talk is dumb. Let's move on.
— AshLee Strong (@AshLeeStrong) April 4, 2016
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