...We felt a disturbance in the farce, as if millions of establishment GOP voices cried out in terror... and were suddenly silenced. Just minutes after we opined on "what Paul Ryan was up to" suggesting he is positioning for a 2020 run, The Hill reports the Speaker will make a statement at 1515ET "to rule himself out [of the 2016 nomination debacle] and put this to rest once and for all."
Furthermore, in a Wisconsin radio interview earlier Tuesday, Ryan said he wanted to be "crystal clear" that he will not allow his name to be placed in nomination for president at the party convention in July.
Ryan's odds are tumbling...
As The Hill reports,
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will definitively rule himself out as a contender to be the GOP presidential nominee in a formal statement before the media Tuesday afternoon.
"He's going to rule himself out and put this to rest once and for all," an aide said.
The Speaker will make his statement at 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday just steps from the Capitol at the Republican National Committee headquarters.
Ryan has ruled out running for president multiple times this cycle, but chatter about the young Speaker emerging as a consensus candidate at a brokered convention hasn't died down. The speculation has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks after Ryan gave a speech to a roomful of House interns before the House adjourned for its long spring recess last month calling for a more dignified political dialogue. Ryan’s office — unintentionally, aides say — stoked the flames with the release of a video of the speech that some, including the conservative news site the Drudge Report, interpreted as a campaign advertisement.
Ryan, who will be the chairman of the GOP convention in Cleveland this July, has maintained that whoever emerges as the party’s nominee should be someone who has campaigned for the position over the last year.