When Paul Ryan announced on Wednesday that he would resign, he did so with the air of a benevolent father, assuring his brood that he would stick around until year’s end. “I know most speakers don’t go out on their own terms,” he said, but added that he’d follow in the footsteps of Harry Reid: “he announced he wasn’t going to run again, and he stayed on as Senate leader. So yes, that’s what I’m going to do.” Ryan positioned his decision as a boon for the party, noting that he would continue fund-raising, and telling reporters, “I really do not believe whether I stay or go in 2019 is going to affect a person’s individual race for Congress.” Behind the scenes, however, members of his own party were less than enchanted.

“He will be gone by the end of July,” a senior G.O.P. House member told Axios’s Jonathan Swan. Ryan’s legitimacy as a donor vessel is less in doubt than his ability to hold together a deeply fractured party—there’s growing concern that, in his new role as lame duck, he’ll be powerless in the face of intra-party feuds. “Scuttlebutt is that Paul will have to step down . . . soon,” a source close to Republican leadership told Axios. “Members won’t follow a lame duck, he’ll have no leverage to cut deals, and the last thing they need in this environment is six months of palace intrigue and everyone stabbing everyone else in the back.”

Whether the party was united or not, Ryan’s announcement could not have been more ill-timed, coming just months before a contentious midterm election that may wipe out the Republican majority in the House. Already, 39 G.O.P. congressmen (including Ryan himself) have announced their retirements at the end of 2018, potentially ceding ground to Democrats, who only need to pick up 23 seats to win the House back. “We would have more success if there’s no ambiguity as to what the leadership structure might look like,” Representative Tom Graves told Politico, calling for a speaker election A.S.A.P. “Certainty is important. . . . From the conversations I’ve had, everybody wants our ‘A team’ in place, our strongest team in place, so we have the strongest outcome going into the election cycle.” “I don’t see how it can be maintained,” Rep. Tom Massie said. “It’s an unstable situation, eight months of a lame-duck speaker? The donors are going to want to meet the next guy or gal, right? It just seems unstable to me.” A former Hill aide was even more blunt: “The idea that he would lead us into the most difficult midterm election while looking for another job is alarming.”

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Worse, a six-month delay could up the ante in the already-contentious race to succeed Ryan. The two front-runners, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise, have been jockeying for Ryan’s spot since well before he announced his retirement, and one Republican told Politico there’s a fear the two could spend the intervening months “shadowboxing” for the position, forcing the rest of the caucus to take sides. Several Republicans predicted to Axios that the House Freedom Caucus’s dislike of McCarthy—many members blocked his bid for the speakership in 2015—could make the intra-party dynamic untenable. Though there’s some sense that the Majority Leader, who is well-liked by Trump, is the favorite, Scalise would reportedly leap at an opening if he senses McCarthy won’t be able to drum up the necessary votes. (“I’ve never run against Kevin and wouldn’t run against Kevin,” Scalise insisted on Fox News Thursday. “He and I are good friends.”)

If Ryan is asked to step down in advance of his timeline, Graves predicted he would go quietly. “He’s been selfless up until this point,” Graves said, adding, “Paul wants what’s best for our conference,” and will gladly step down “if he senses that this is the direction that the movers want to go.” And with a likely seven-figure income in his immediate future, there’s little to stop him from turning his back on the chaos he’ll leave behind.