Former House Speaker John Boehner wants current House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)56% to be the GOP’s presidential nominee in the 2016 race.
“If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot [at the July convention in Cleveland], I’m for none of the above,” Boehner said Wednesday morning at an event in Florida. “They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I’m for none of the above. I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee.”
The endorsement, which was reported by Politico, followed Trump primary victories in four states last night, putting him on track to grab the 2016 nomination.
The Boehner nomination came the day after Ryan hinted he would reach for the crown. “You know, I haven’t given any thought to this stuff,” Ryan told CNBC Tuesday. “People say, ‘What about the contested convention?’ I say, well, there are a lot of people running for president. We’ll see. Who knows.”
However, a poll released Tuesday by YouGov showed that only one-in-eight GOP supporters want the GOP establishment to oppose Trump if he wins the nomination.
Ryan is a favorite of the GOP establishment — he favors an “any willing worker” plan that would allow companies to import foreign workers when Americans demand higher wages, and he favors President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would allow U.S. companies to export jobs held by U.S. employees and also to import an unlimited number of foreign workers for service jobs in the United States.
In December 2015, Ryan even inserted a new rule in the budget allowing companies to import roughly 200,000 extra guest-workers per year, even as GOP voters were showing their strong opposition to the use of foreign workers inside the United States.