Friday on MSNBC, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) doesn’t want to be House Speaker because he would have to work with the “extreme” Republicans who want to take away the rights of gays, woman and minorities.
Gutiérrez said, “Look, they cannibalize their own. First Cantor, then McCarthy, before that Boehner. That’s why Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be the Speaker of the House. He doesn’t want to be the Speaker of the House because he understands that there are 35, 40 Republican members of the House that didn’t come here to govern. They came here to destroy government. They came here to take the government down. They don’t want to coalesce and work with the other side of the aisle. They want to take the country backwards.”
He continued, “Yesterday I was at a hearing, the judiciary committee. What do they want to do now they have a new committee and a new investigation into Planned Parenthood. Why? Because they want to turn the clock back on women. They want women to go back to the ’50s and that ‘Mad Men’ series that we watch on cable TV where women didn’t have rights. That’s what they want to do, and that’s why he doesn’t want to take on the Speakership. They want to turn the clock back, and they have chaos. Look, if they can’t do something as fundamental as pick a new leader, as fundamental as pick a new leader, and every time they pick a leader, they cannibalize that leader. How are they going to lead this nation?”
Complementing Ryan he continued, “Let me just say this. smartest person, I believe, in the GOP conference and would be good for the country, would be good for the Republican Party, would be good for the House of Representatives … because Paul Ryan is the kind of individual that will work with other people on the other side of the aisle, and I think that that’s what need.”
He added, “He would work with Democrats in order to solve the problems of America and that’s exactly what the 35, 40 members, these extreme members, very vocal, organized, extreme members of the Republican caucus don’t want. They don’t want an American solution. They think, you know what, gay people should go back in the closet, women should be at home in the kitchen, and those Latinos and Asians, why don’t we just make them invisible again or deport them altogether? That’s their philosophy of government. They want to go back before there was a Voting Rights and a Civil Rights Act in America. When I was born in America in 1953, it was separate but equal. But let me assure you, it was separate but not real equal for people like me. That’s the America they want to take us back to. and guess what? the vast majority of the American people are going to push back strong against that attempt to take us backwards.”
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