Mr. Speaker: Lead or Get Out of the Way

Speaker Boehner’s decision to step down as Speaker of the House and McCarthy’s decision not to seek the seat may finally create the showdown in our Country that is needed to move us away from the fiscal iceberg and disaster clearly looming over the American landscape.

The Republican Party and its leadership have consistently taken off the table the logical measures that would bring the issue of the direction of our country to a head. For some reason, the current insider leadership is unwilling to take a firm stance on any issue and hence the frustration that so many voters have with the insiders to the political process.

The current Republican leadership team has been completely impotent in stopping an out-of-control executive branch and its leader, Barack Obama.

Liberal pundits, and in some cases even Fox News, have chided the more moderate Republicans in their inability to form a government under an effective Speaker of the House. Instead of chiding them, the news media should be expect the type of constitutional showdown that is about to take place and as planned for with the system of checks and balances envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

Many are blasting the Values Voter and the tea party Caucus in the House of Representatives with preventing the Republican leadership from getting a majority needed to pass "compromise" legislation.

The reality, as seen with the popularity of so many outsider presidential candidates, is that the political insiders of the Republican and the Democratic parties do not represent what people want with their government plain and simple.

Be it the defunding of Planned Parenthood, balancing the budget, fiscal responsibility, the disastrous effects of the Affordable Care Act, or unrelenting unconstitutional executive orders on illegal immigration, the Republican Party has failed, despite the majority in both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, to make its position known. They have squandered their majorities with no clear demonstration that they understand the dissatisfaction brewing against them

People are simply fed up.

Even on the left, Bernie Sanders’s popularity with the Progressive Movement is having the same effect on the Democrat side and with Hillary Clinton.

Neither the Republican or Democratic parties seem to understand is that more and more Americans feel like they are have been abandoned by their elected leaders.

Be you liberal or conservative, the dissatisfaction with Congress as reflected in their extremely low favorability ratings, reflecting growing divide in our nation that will boil over and come to a decision point.

Speaker Boehner, then Congressman McCarthy and potentially Congressman Ryan, clearly understand that compromise may no longer be possible. On the other hand, the sad commentary is that President Obama has never been willing to compromise yet the current Republican leadership has failed to deal with that reality.

When Speaker Gingrich threatened a shutdown of the federal government, President Clinton was certain he would do it. That certainty forced Clinton to the bargaining table and a balanced budget ensued and out nation benefited.

In the strategic game of politics, President Obama has made it clear that he would welcome the Republican Party trying a government shutdown. Candidly Obama had made it known that he does not care or so he pretends.

Obama is bluffing about not caring about a shutdown and the Republican leadership is falling for it. By caving in to this bluff from Obama, the President has gotten virtually everything he has wanted despite not having a majority in the Senate or the House of Representatives. Obama has effectively neutralized the Speaker of the House and helped force Boehner’s resignation.

The Arabic language and the Islamic culture is a poetic and flowery language. That is President Obama’s background. He is using words in much the same way as Iranian and Iraqi leaders have in the past. However, he is going to be concerned about his legacy. That combination of his Muslim cultural background and his American cultural experience make him vulnerable to his egotistical desires for a legacy for himself – that is his fundamental transformation of the American landscape.

The American people through the value voters and the conservative members of the United States Congress are telling the mainstream political process that we want change, and we are not satisfied with the direction of this nation. We are willing to take a stand and we are not willing to take anything off the table. We too are willing to create constitutional crisis to resolve the unconstitutional actions of this president.

The Speaker of the House is a leader. The person is second in line to be president after the Vice President. It is an extremely important position. There is a period of time and that time is now that compromise is no longer acceptable to a nation whose fundamental values has been hijacked by an extremely liberal minority in this executive branch and the Democratic Party.

For the next Speaker of the House of Representatives lead or get out of the way!

Col. Frank Ryan, CPA, USMCR (Ret) and served in Iraq and briefly in Afghanistan and specializes in corporate restructuring and lectures on ethics for the state CPA societies. He has served on numerous boards of publicly traded and non-profit organizations. He can be reached at [email protected] and twitter at @fryan1951.