Like a cheap tent or a bad hand, Dave Brat folded.
Sources close to Bearing Drift on Capitol Hill have informed us that Brat is quietly telling lobbyists and others that he will indeed support Rep. Paul Ryan for U.S. House Speaker despite an earlier performance on NBC’s Meet The Press and elsewhere in populist media outlets that Brat held reservations about Ryan’s quality and conservative bona fides.
This comes on the heels of recent blowback even from erstwhile conservatives such as Glenn Beck, who recently blasted the House Freedom Caucus [1] for not digging in their heels and rejecting Paul Ryan outright. Beck recently tore into HFC member Rep. Loudermilk on air for kneeling to the House GOP establishment, in unflattering terms [2]:
“The only reason why I’m so upset about this is because we’re running out of time. There’s only so much runway. And so if you’ve made a mistake on this, if you guys have made a mistake on this and you have given this back to the GOP, the GOP is over. You’ve lost the presidential election because you won’t stand for anything and no one will go out and vote — no matter who is running,” Beck added.
Opportunism never skips a beat.
Of course, Brat has been showing signs of weakness for some time. Brat refused to sign onto pro-life legislation [3] earlier in the year until the Planned Parenthood videos became known, Brat joined hands with Nancy Pelosi in opposing free trade [4] agreements designed to isolate Communist China, continues to hate on immigrants [5], completely screws it up on Syrian Christians and Syrian refugees [6], and perhaps most embarrassingly of all falls for the neo-Malthusian fallacy of the Iron Law of Wages on economics [7] (trust him, he’s a professor) and what do we have?
We have an opportunist of the most base sort.
Those who knew of Dave Brat’s tax-hiking escapades in the General Assembly knew this to be the character of the man. That story has yet to be told… but will be.
For the moment, enjoy your pro-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-free trade, and now spineless Dave Brat.
I suppose he’ll flip flop on Ryan up to the 11th hour the same way he did with Boehner… but that’s another story of spineless deal cutting that has yet to be told (but will be).