Paul Ryan’s resignation sets up Donald Trump’s impeachment

| 11:45 pm EDT April 11, 2018
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This morning, even as Donald Trump was posting exceedingly absurd tweets like “Gas Killing Animal” and Stop The Arms Race” and “Fake Russia C story” (there’s still debate about what the “C” might have stood for), Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he’s quitting Congress. Some have quipped that Ryan took one look at Trump’s Twitter feed and said screw it. But regardless of Ryan’s reasoning, because of the specific role he’s in, he just set the stage for Trump’s impeachment. Let me explain.

For impeachment hearings to begin in the House, a simple majority vote is required. Under current party math, that would require all of the Democrats and roughly ten percent of the Republicans in the House to vote “yes.” There might be that many potential “yes” votes within the House GOP, particularly as Trump’s scandals become more untenable, but it’s difficult to imagine they’d vote “yes” unless Ryan signs off on it behind the scenes in his role as Speaker.

Paul Ryan has consistently shown us that when it comes to Donald Trump, he’s been paralyzed into inaction by… we don’t know. Fear of backlash from Trump voters? Fear that his own complicity in the Trump-Russia scandal might be exposed? Fear of his own shadow? In any case, Ryan hasn’t done anything to go against Trump. However, now that he’s announced he’s resigning, we’re about to see a major shift in one of two directions.

For weeks, some House Republicans have been floating the idea of replacing Paul Ryan with Steve Scalise, with one of them having gone so far as to say it publicly. But they weren’t talking about waiting until the end of Ryan’s term to make the switch, because by then, the Democrats will probably control the House, and the Republicans won’t be choosing the Speaker anyway. They were talking about replacing Ryan as Speaker now. Ryan’s official position (for now) is that he’s going to finish his term.

So why would Paul Ryan want to stick around for another eight months if he’s already decided to retire? The most logical explanation would be that he wants to be in control of the House if and when the impeachment issue is forced. Considering that Donald Trump’s House GOP allies were looking to oust Ryan, it suggests that Ryan plans to be on the pro-impeachment side the next time the Democrats force a vote on the matter. As incredible as it sounds, that all adds up to Ryan having announced his resignation so he can oust Trump before the midterms, in what would presumably be an attempt at minimizing GOP losses in November. Stay tuned.