You may remember that in our last installment we left the Republican Party—or at least the media’s account thereof—in what Sean O’Casey’s Paycock would have called a “terrible state o’ chassis” over the succession to John Boehner as Speaker of the House. Of course it was not to be expected that when, in response to desperate pleas from a party so afflicted, a reluctant Paul Ryan stepped forward to unite it (more or less) behind him as the new Speaker, the media were going to let go of so fruitful a “narrative” as this story of frightful chaos in the party they so despise. “Paul Ryan is right about the House being broken. But he probably can’t fix it,” wrote Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post—and, a few days later: “Ryan has a lot going for him. But he’s still unlikely to heal a broken House.” A Post editorial was headlined: “Good luck, Speaker Ryan. You’re going to need it.”

The editorial identified the usual suspects in this story of political mugging as the “hard-right” of the party, who are known to themselves as the Freedom Caucus and to the Democratic Party’s talking points as “extremists.” Mr. Cillizza preferred to stick to the euphemistic “polarization,” but the point was the same—namely that Mr. Ryan might be a decent enough fellow but he couldn’t really hope to rein in his party’s lunatic fringe, now supposed to be in the ascendant. Francis X. Clines of The New