Coronated–Paul Ryan Nominated ‘Unanimously’ by Voice Vote

Congressman Paul Ryan was re-nominated to serve as House Speaker by a voice-vote of Republican lawmakers on Tuesday.

Politico reports that the voice-vote, as opposed to a secret ballot tally, masked how many members actually oppose Ryan:

House Republicans on Tuesday afternoon unanimously nominated Paul Ryan for a second term as Speaker. The GOP conference gave the Wisconsin Republican voice-vote approval, forgoing a secret ballot tally that would have shown how many Republicans oppose Ryan leading the chamber.

“Ryan still must win a floor vote in January to officially retain his gavel. That will require him to garner the support of a majority of the House, typically 218 Republicans — giving him little wiggle room with his conference,” Politico notes.

According to the report, “Toward the end of the closed-door conference, [Rep. Louie] Gohmert used an open mic to accuse Ryan of being soft on border security after Trump won and ‘insulting’ the President-elect by suggesting in press conferences and on TV that Trump ‘heard a voice’ no other politicians had.”

Ryan was nominated by House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Mick Mulvaney, who shares Ryan’s support for open borders immigration policies. A 2015 PBS documentary revealed how both Ryan and Mulvaney were at the center of the 2013-2014 La Raza-backed effort to enact Obama’s amnesty agenda.

According to Pew polling data, Ryan’s expansionist immigration agenda is opposed by more than nine in ten GOP voters. Similarly, nearly nine in ten GOP voters oppose Paul Ryan’s vision on trade, according to polling data from a recent POLITICO pro-Harvard survey.

It remains unclear whether members of the House Freedom Caucus will vote in January to re-elect as House Speaker a man whose globalist positions on immigration and trade are opposed by the vast majority of their constituents.

Some prominent movement conservatives have expressed concern that Ryan will not work to enact Donald Trump’s mandate given to him by the American people. As Phyllis Schlafly’s hand-chosen successor and president of her Eagle Forum organization, Ed Martin, has explained:

Now is the time to move forward on the Trump agenda, not back to the failed Ryan policies… On Tuesday, November 8, the American voters showed conclusively that Paul Ryan is not the leader for this moment in our history.  The message is clear: Ryan’s judgment was rejected!

The House Freedom Caucus’s stated purpose is to give “a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them.” Yet as one senior aide to a member of the House Freedom Caucus explained, “Many members of the Freedom Caucus never opposed Ryan’s positions on trade and immigration the way their constituents do. So they’re more than happy to ignore and cast aside the policies that got Trump elected in exchange for going along with the Ryan’s policies.”

“At a certain point, we’re going to have to change our group’s name from the ‘House Freedom Caucus’ to the ‘Paul Ryan Caucus,’” the aide told Breitbart.