The untold reason Paul Ryan won’t run for president in 2016

[mountaineer]

No, apparently it's not just that he wouldn't have a snowball's chance. There's more to the story!

The untold reason Paul Ryan won’t run for president in 2016
The Wisconsin congressman told Yahoo News he wanted to protect his anti-poverty project from being politicized
By Jon Ward
March 10, 2015 5:37 AM
Yahoo News

WASHINGTON — Paul Ryan has visited low-income neighborhoods in Texas, Ohio and elsewhere over the past two years to meet with groups and individuals working to help lift people out of poverty.

It’s been a little-publicized affair. Ryan brought almost no press with him on any of the trips. One of the few reporters to accompany him, Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins, last April detailed the Wisconsin Republican’s visit to an early-morning men’s Bible study in Indianapolis.

Ryan’s critics have complained that these expeditions were part of a politically calculated vanity project designed to soften the GOP’s image and set the congressman — who was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012 — up for a bid for higher office.

But on March 17, Ryan will issue a rejoinder to that accusation in the form of a documentary film on the people he met during his travels to impoverished communities. In fact, he told Yahoo News, part of the reason he chose not to run for president in 2016 was that he wanted to protect this video project from second-guessing about his motives for doing it.

“I made my decision [not to run for president] for a multitude of reasons. You know — young family, in a good place to make a big difference — but also I didn’t want to jeopardize this project and these causes by betting it on a presidential campaign. You know, who knows who’s going to win,” said Ryan in an interview.

“I wanted to make sure this got away from presidential politics. I wanted to make sure that this got some distance from being seen as some personal ambitious project for a politician,” said Ryan, who is now chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, which plays a central role in making the tax policies through which so much of the government’s anti-poverty efforts flow.

“Comeback: A New Mini-Series About American Redemption” will be released to the public by Opportunity Lives, the conservative group that funded the making of the films. Backed by a group of donors on the right that includes Paul Singer, CEO of New York hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., the series cost $180,000 to make. It was shot and produced by Clare Burns, a young conservative filmmaker who produced the widely praised biographical short on Mitt Romney that introduced him on the final night of the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa.

When federal disclosure forms revealed that Ryan’s leadership political action committee, Prosperity PAC, had paid more than $81,000 to Burns, it sparked talk that Ryan was preparing to run for president. USA Today called it “a curious expense.”

The seven-episode series Burns has produced consists of one introductory episode and then tells six stories, for 10 to 15 minutes each, of people Ryan met in Cleveland, Dallas, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., San Antonio and Somerset, N.J.

The first episode is the only one to feature Ryan prominently. In it he talks with Bob Woodson, a conservative African-American anti-poverty activist who served as Ryan’s guide to the predominantly minority communities he visited, and explains how he decided to take a closer look at poverty after the 2012 election.

Ryan has traced it back to the one event he did on the topic as Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s running mate, in Cleveland. During that event, a group of ministers and community activists gathered around Ryan and laid hands on him to pray for him. Ryan has said that that moment lit a spark and set him on his journey. A little over two years later, Ryan now talks about the stories of recovering drug addicts and redeemed gang members with fervor.

“I get so much joy and inspiration out of these stories that I basically came to the idea that you need to figure out how to share this because these are stories that need to be told and retold so that more can be found,” he said. “The whole purpose of [the video series] is to show redemption exists, people are fighting poverty very successfully, it’s outright inspiring, and they’re in every community.”

Ryan, who spoke to Yahoo News exclusively about the film, was at pains to insist it is not political. “It’s really not policy and partisan as much as it’s just trying to be inspirational,” he said.

But there is a clear conservative message embedded in the series, which is expressed explicitly in the trailer preview for the second episode. “Government programs can’t change lives,” says Paul Grodell, a minister who mentored Greg Bradford, a recovering drug addict. ...

Read the rest at Yahoo News