With our large adult president melting down on the Twitter Machine as his lawyers get raided by the FBI and the Russia probe closes in around him, it's becoming less and less fun to do Republican things. That goes double for members of the House of Representatives, where recent special election results and polling may point to a coming Blue Wave that could wash Republicans out of the majority this November. So what to do if, say, you're the Republican Speaker of the House?

Axios has a clue Wednesday morning:

House Speaker Paul Ryan has told confidants that he will announce soon that he won't run for reelection in November, according to sources with knowledge of the conversations.

This is not the first time reports have indicated Ryan is open to skipping town, but it seems to be the most concrete. Politico is now echoing the claim:

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The reasoning Axios serves up is also pretty concrete:

House Republicans were already in very tough spot for midterms, with many endangered members and the good chance that Democrats will win the majority. Friends say that after Ryan passed tax reform, his longtime dream, he was ready to step out of a job that has become endlessly frustrating, in part because of President Trump.

His "longtime dream" of codifying the budding plutocracy in the tax code now fulfilled, Ryan can retire in peace—or, you know, take an insanely lucrative lobbying job. What the report doesn't mention is that Ryan also faces a challenge from perceived Democratic supercandidate Randy Bryce, a career union ironworker who makes a damn good campaign ad and says all the right things. Bryce has an uphill battle in Ryan's red district, but he’s making noise.

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(Ryan also faced a primary challenge from Paul Nehlen, a former goofball on a motorcycle who, in a true sign of our times, has recently taken a hard right turn into anti-Semitism—to the point he was suspended from Twitter. This raises the question of whether Ryan's replacement on the Republican ballot in his district will be a white nationalist.)

Politico already reported Monday on The Race to Replace, apparently a decathlon featuring House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise. (McCarthy was in the running when Ryan got the Speaker job in 2015. The Californian was eliminated when he gave away the game on national TV on how the Benghazi investigation was just a way to undermine Hillary Clinton's electoral prospects.) Whoever wins, we can only hope they'll show more courage than Ryan did in providing a check on the president as a co-equal branch of government. It is Ryan, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who bears the brunt of the responsibility for allowing Trump to run roughshod over our democratic norms and bring the nation as close to authoritarianism as it's been in at least decades.



Wednesday also brought an indication of why Ryan might be eager to get out of the game. The Speaker he replaced, John Boehner, has been visibly enjoying himself, mowing his lawn and driving his RV and smoking. Apparently, he's now open to the idea of smoking more than cigarettes and cigars:

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I’m joining the board of #AcreageHoldings because my thinking on cannabis has evolved. I’m convinced de-scheduling the drug is needed so we can do research, help our veterans, and reverse the opioid epidemic ravaging our communities. @AcreageCannabis https://t.co/f5i9KcQD0W — John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) April 11, 2018

A little free time can do wonders for a man. Maybe in a few years Ryan will concede that, in the richest country in the history of the world, we have enough resources to provide an adequate social safety net so citizens don't die in abject poverty, unable to access healthcare or a place to live.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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