Mr. Speaker

Speaker of the House offers only slightly more job security these days than Number Three Man in al Quaeda used to. Paul Ryan is the latest guy in the cross hairs. So far he has deeply angered not only Paul Krugman but the right wing House conservatives, President Trump, and the right wing media. All agree that he should take the fall for Trumpcare. Will high cheekbones, the widow's peak, and devotion to Ayn Rand be enough to save him?

Trump loosed Jeanine Pirro, Fox News host and Trump attack dog, on Ryan yesterday:

Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host, is a longtime friend of President Trump. So when Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Saturday — a day after his crushing defeat in the House on health care — that people should watch her show that night, political observers began guessing what was in store.

What she delivered was a diatribe against the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan.

“Paul Ryan needs to step down as speaker of the House,” Ms. Pirro, a former prosecutor, said at the opening of her show. “The reason? He failed to deliver the votes on his health care bill.”

Of course Trump is trying to pass off his share of the blame for the disaster - it was Trump who promised a "terrific" bill and Trump who signed up for Ryan's disaster.

In Ryan's favor there is the fact that House Republicans are deeply divided (that's why they couldn't pass a bill - any bill) and there is no obvious candidate who is likely to be less divisive.

I am resisting schadenfreude for the moment on the theory that whoever comes next will probably be worse.

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