...when he announced yesterday that he wouldn't seek re-election. It wasn't just that 40 of his Republican colleagues had already declared they weren't running again. It wasn't just that pollsters and prognosticators were predicting the GOP would lose the House come November, and Ryan his speakership. It wasn't even that Ryan, lacking 60 Republican votes in the Senate, wasn't able to roll back the essential government services he so despised, and that, after November's election, that prospect would be even more unlikely.
It was also that Ryan's model of government—low taxes, few and low-quality services—was being rejected even in the most Republican of states. In Kansas, good Republican parents had ousted the Ryan-Brownback tax-and-budget-cutting legislators in GOP primaries, supplanting them with representatives who voted to raise taxes to provide more funding for schools. In West Virginia, a wall-to-wall Republican state government had caved to striking teachers' demands to do the same. It was happening, too, in Oklahoma, and the prospect of higher taxes and more public funds also loomed over Kentucky, Arizona, and who knows what other supposedly solid Republican states.
Not an Ayn Rand moment, nor a Grover Norquist moment, nor a Paul Ryan moment. Let Mitch McConnell deal with Donald Trump's messes. The writing was on the wall: It's time to go.
Postscript—For the GOP: Denny Hastert, John Boehner, and now Paul Ryan.
For the Democrats: Nancy Pelosi abides.
