Republicans can't stop talking about Paul Ryan making a surprise late entry into the presidential race
No matter how often House Speaker Paul Ryan says he has no interest party's presidential nomination, the rumors of a GOP convention fiasco that leads to his selection continue to swirl.
Politico's Mike Allen reported in his Monday newsletter that "top Republicans are becoming increasingly vocal" of the possibility that Ryan winds up with the GOP nomination.
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"One of the nation's best-wired Republicans," as cited by Allen, gave Ryan a better-than 50% chance of leaving the July convention as the party's nominee. The source gave a 60% chance of the convention becoming deadlocked. At that time, Allen's source boldly predicted that Ryan would have a 90% chance of having the delegates turn his way.
Ryan, who's in Israel, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday that he remains uninterested in the job.
"I think you need to run for president if you're going to be president, and I'm not running for president. So period, end of story," Ryan said.
Paul Ryan throughout his career
But, as Allen noted, Ryan also insisted he had no interest in becoming House speaker.
"In both cases, the maximum leverage is to NOT WANT IT — and to be begged to do it," Allen wrote. "He and his staff are trying to be as Shermanesque as it gets."
The firestorm of Ryan-for-resident speculation reached a fever pitch in mid-March, after CNBC reported that the Wisconsin lawmaker wouldn't "categorically" rule out accepting the GOP nomination. Ryan's spent the following weeks insisting that he would not become the party's nominee.
Ryan gave a late-March speech about the state of American politics in which he spoke out about the language being used in the presidential race. Although he did not mention any of the candidates by name, Ryan took a shot at the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, by saying his own party was partially to blame for vitriol in political discourse.
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"That was somebody who was laying out the speech that, in most cases, you'd give six months before you announce you're going to run," Allen quoted a Ryan friend as saying.
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