YES, PAUL RYAN DELIVERED FOR THE CRAZIES. I STILL DON'T THINK THAT WILL SAVE HIM IN THE LONG RUN.

This morning I argued that Paul Ryan sealed his doom by shepherding a budget deal through Congress that's less than 100% wingnut -- the crazies in the GOP will never accept compromise, so Ryan is inevitably going to be forced out as speaker eventually, and he certainly won't be the GOP's presidential nominee anytime soon.

I still think that's true. However, Charlie Pierce points out that the budget deal protects the wingnut "social welfare" organizations that are the backbone of the ridiculous IRS "scandal," which ought to make the crazies happy:

Buried in the budget deal that now has emerged from Congress is a provision by which the IRS will be actively forbidden from enacting new rules in 2016 to rein in the obvious scams in which most of the 501(c)4's engage. I don't care how loudly the flying monkeys howl at Speaker Paul Ryan for "betraying" them by striking a deal at all, this is the real joker in the deck, and the fact that this principle was so easily bargained away says a great deal about the people in power from both political parties. They have accepted the new reality of legalized influence-peddling and are finding ways to prosper in it. This, I guess, is another New Normal in our politics.

I think the crazies will pocket this win and still declare Ryan a pariah sooner or later for not getting them 100% of what they want. But yes, they'll be happy about this.

In any case, I don't believe this crazy scenario floated at The Hill by Bill Owens, a former Democratic congressman:

What would lead one to believe a brokered [2016] GOP convention would result in a Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) [presidential] candidacy? Here's what I see.

We have rumblings from establishment Republicans who have grave concerns about Donald Trump as the potential candidate, and for that matter, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) as well.

There are numerous reports of Republican donors holding back from supporting candidates at the same levels that they supported GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign. As Gregory Devor, a major Republican fundraiser, said, "I cannot commit a dime to anybody because I don't see a future." Translation: There is no candidate who is likely to succeed in the general election.

... If one were to create a storyline with Machiavellian overtones, it might go something like this:

Party insiders, looking at the chaos in the House of Representatives and simultaneously the chaos in the Republican presidential process, ponder to whom they should turn. The obvious choice is Romney, and, maybe as a less obvious choice, Ryan. To set that plot in motion, they create a drama around the selection of the next Speaker of the House, aided by front-runner House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (Calif.) blunder over Benghazi and the consistent chaos created by the Freedom Caucus and other far-right conservatives in the House, and see an opportunity to position Ryan as a savior in the House....

Bill? Stop -- your fillings are picking up signals from the aliens now, so you might want to get your meds rebalanced.

I can imagine the GOP Establishment wanting to stage a brokered convention with Ryan emerging as the nominee, but I can't imagine the crazies accepting it -- and I certainly can't believe that the downfall of both John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy was an elaborate bit of Kabuki theater meant to position Ryan as the party's savior at the 2016 convention. (If the muckamucks are thinking about him, he's well enough known that they didn't need to elevate him to the speakership in order to nominate him.)

This can't work. The nomination of an establishmentarian who didn't win any primaries would make the rank-and-file crazies more furious than they are now; they'd respond by boycotting the entire party up and down the ballot.

Maybe the muckamucks don't grasp that, so maybe they'll want to pull a backroom deal to nominate Ryan -- but they'll do that at their peril. (However, if Jeb Bush were suddenly to make a miraculous comeback and were to lead the race without quite having enough votes to win on the first ballot, the crazies would gladly welcome an alternative chosen by stealth -- but the party elders would want to go with Jeb, so speculation on that scenario is pointless.)

Maybe the party's voters will change by 2020. Maybe the party bosses will figure out a more Establishment-friendly way to structure the primaries by then. (They thought they had the contest rigged this time.) But with things as they are, I still don't see Ryan as a nominee in the near future.