Republican congressman Glenn Grothman says he thinks its 50-50 at best that his colleague Paul Ryan will run for speaker. Grothman says Ryan has been under almost constant pressure from fellow conservatives to run for the post. Grothman says in addition to the time commitment Ryan has to decide if he really wants to give up his love of creating policy as chair of the Ways and Means committee. “I think anybody in this job will tell the worst thing about the job is fundraising. Right now Paul is chairman of the Ways and Means and is spending time creating policy,” Grothman told AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program. “That being said we’ve all been in positions in our life in which everybody wants us to do something, and sometimes we knuckle under and do something we hate to do.” Meanwhile Grothman says he thinks Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the running because there was a group of 30 plus conservative lawmakers who made threats not to support him if he didn’t do exactly as they say. The same group who forced Speaker John Boehner to resign. “I talked to one of these people and when they kind of pushed Boehner out they thought they were going to get McCarthy. These people after knowing full well they were going to get McCarthy, I think what happened was they said McCarthy is not good enough and they switched from saying they would be satisfied with McCarthy to they wouldn’t be satisfied with McCarthy.” Grothman says maybe Ryan should offer a compromise to serve as speaker until after the election next fall. “If I were Paul Ryan I would say look guys and gals, I’ll be your speaker for the next 14 months but when the new president is sworn in, I want to go back and be co-chair of Ways and Means.”
