In an extensive interview with a reporter from The Washington Post, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan revealed that he is not ready to close the door on a run for president in 2016.
Ryan was insistent that he could still launch a run for the White House and even criticized those who seem to already be all but announced, characterizing their efforts as unseemly.
As others are already testing the political waters for a run at the White House, Ryan says that he feels no need to make any moves this early. He feels that it is unseemly to make any moves until the 2014 midterm elections are over.
Ryan said he feels he already has enough name recognition, so he doesn’t see any reason to be out there early to build a following.
“I don’t feel the need to be out there, putting my toe in the water,” Ryan said to the Post. “I don’t see the point in it. It’s not fun, and I don’t think I need to.”
The congressman said that he has “all the time in the world” to make any decisions. “I’ll line it all up next year and do my long list of pros and cons, this and that.”
As to other rumored presidential candidates, just ahead of the midterms the Post began to quiz the Congressman on just what he thought of some of the purported frontrunners. Ryan said he had no idea what either Jeb Bush or Chris Christie intended to do, but he was certain that Mitt Romney isn’t running again.
Still, Ryan has said that if Mitt Romney does run again, he will bow to Romney and stay out of the way, leaving Romney unchallenged, at least by Ryan.
The former vice presidential candidate also hoped that conservatives have learned some lessons from the last several years.
Conservatives should have learned a lesson from the shutdown, Ryan said. “Those tactics didn’t work,” he claimed. “If we’re going to win, it’s going to be because of ideas. We’ve got to build that movement and have a governing temperament.”
Ryan also had a lot of praise for GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner.
“Yes. John takes a lot of slings and arrows,” the former VP candidate said. “He takes a ton of heat for not being what some people want him to be. Yet at the end of the day, he keeps moving ahead and delivering. John has a knack for making the House work, and it’s a harder job than most people realize. I wish they’d give him more credit.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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