Pat Buchanan: Time To Lay The ‘Young Guns’ To Rest; Oppose Paul Ryan For Speaker

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Pat Buchanan is warning the Republican Party it shouldn’t turn over the Speaker’s gavel to House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan.

“The honor of it all aside, Rep. Paul Ryan would do well to decline the speakership of the House. For it is a poisoned chalice that is being offered to him,” Buchanan writes in his Tuesday column.

Buchanan explains that Ryan should not be Speaker of the House because on the two biggest issues where Republican voters are split from Republican donors—trade and immigration— Ryan consistently sides with the Party’s wealthy corporate contributors against the vast majority of GOP voters.

Buchanan declares:

Ryan’s popularity and pleasant persona are not going to be able to smooth over those divisions. For they are about ideology, and about issues such as free trade and amnesty for people here illegally, where Ryan stands squarely with the establishment and against the revolt.

Indeed, Ryan’s record on trade and immigration makes him far more of a champion for the donor class than even his fellow “Young Guns,” Kevin McCarthy and Eric Cantor.

As Buchanan puts it:

Many House rebels and Trump supporters look on the hollowing out of America’s industrial base as the direct result of trade treaties negotiated for the benefit of transnational corporations, whose profits are contingent on cutting production costs by moving factories out of the USA. Ryan voted for all of those trade deals.

And Ryan voted for fast track, the unilateral surrender of Congress’ power even to amend the trade treaties Barack Obama brings home. Should he become speaker, Paul Ryan would have to round up Republican votes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal Obama has negotiated. But not only are Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton opposed to TPP, Trump calls it a “disaster” that fails to address the critical issue of “currency manipulation.” The TPP has already been rechristened by Republican rebels as “Obamatrade.” If Ryan harbors ambitions to be president, he will steer clear of this coming battle between nationalism and globalism.”

Similarly, Buchanan observes that, “On the issues of mass immigration and illegal immigration that have roiled the Republican race, Ryan is regarded as an open-borders man.”

Paul Ryan’s long history of aligning himself with open borders enthusiasts, and working to implement open borders immigration policies extends back two-decades, since he first arrived in Washington D.C. as a young college intern from Miami University in Ohio.

Buchanan concludes with a dire warning:

Paul Ryan is not going to be able to unite a House Republican caucus that is splitting on issues like this. As chairman of the House Committee on Ways & Means, he is better off working on supply-side tax cuts.

After the GOP capture of the House in 2010, Ryan, with new Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, wrote a book about what they were going to do, titled, ‘Young Guns.’

“Young Guns” Cantor and McCarthy are now lying toes up in the OK Corral, and if Paul Ryan becomes Speaker, he will end up the same way.

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