Paul Ryan Goes Full Koch Head With His Cowardly Support of Government Shutdowns

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Paul Ryan had the nerve to say that he didn’t speak out against the government shutdown because it was more important that Republicans were unified. Ryan’s support of government shutdowns is straight out of the Koch playbook.

Video:

Transcript:

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about a couple of things in your book.

I want to read a quote that has picked up a lot of attention. It takes us back to last October, when the Republicans shut down the government in an attempt to defund Obamacare. You didn’t say much at the time about the Ted Cruz strategy, that is, rallying key party conservatives on the House side to let the government shut down, but here is what you wrote in your book.

“In short, the strategy our colleagues have been promoting was flawed from beginning to end. It was a suicide mission, but a lot of members were more afraid of what would happen if they didn’t jump off the cliff.”

I guess I would ask you first, why didn’t you say that back then?

RYAN: Because I want party unity.

I don’t think it was constructive for conservatives to be carping at each other. At the same time, the purpose of that passage is to try and unify our party. I don’t think we can succeed if all we do is criticize and define what we are against.

And the whole point of that was, you actually can’t stop an entitlement with a government shutdown. Entitlements, like Medicare and Social Security and Obamacare, continue on as is. So I didn’t think it was really legitimate to tell the country we could stop it unilaterally in the House, point one.

Democrats slammed Rep. Ryan for his comments, “Congressman Paul Ryan’s misplaced priorities were on full display when he shockingly stated that Republican party unity is more important than preventing a government shutdown,” said Josh Schwerin of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “With no agreement to prevent another shutdown at the end of September and the threat of Ted Cruz and Steve King continuing their stranglehold on the Republican legislative agenda, we can only hope Congressman Ryan reverses his position and decides to put the country first, not his political party.”

Ryan wasn’t only talking about last year’s government shutdown. The government will run out of funding at the end of next month. The Koch brothers have long supported the government shutdown strategy. When the political fallout starts hitting them, they quickly run away from it.

Paul Ryan has long been a Koch favorite, so it isn’t a surprise that he would support government shutdowns in the name of party unity. Rep. Ryan made it clear in the same interview that if Mitt Romney doesn’t run for president in the same interview, he probably will. This is why Ryan is working so hard to rehab his one percenter image with empty talk about poverty.

Rep. Paul Ryan can be summed up in one GIF:

It is quite the gimmick. You can’t even see Koch lips move when Ryan speaks.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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