Hopefully, Paul Ryan will back out of the Speaker search leaving the way for a Freedom Caucus candidate, who will restore a tone of conservative values to Capitol Hill. Since the breaking news of Representative Ryan Zinke’s interest in the spot, some are now speculating he is not “conservative enough” to fill that slot.

AmericanNews.com asserts that Zinke is flexing a conservative muscle and wants to take on Obama.

According to recent reports, former Navy SEAL Team Six commander Rep. Ryan Zinke just confirmed with Brandon Tyler Webb of SofRep that he is considering running for House Speaker. His intentions? To take a stand “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

That includes President Obama.

“I think there are a few people who can do that,” Zinke told Webb. “If folks like Paul Ryan and others step aside, and more of my colleagues ask me to run, I will hear the call to serve. Leadership is about service to country, not self. It’s time to advance the cause of freedom.”

Webb claims that Zinke is “no stranger to good leadership.”

“I would love to see him go against the grain and shake things up as the new speaker,” Webb wrote, referencing working under Zinke during his last tour in the Navy. “He’s a freshman but knows how to lead.”

Webb also added that Zinke would be the type to offer “real solutions, not the bull**** poltical rhetoric we’ve all become accustomed to.”

“Zinke is a proven leader, and in Washington politics, it’s time to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way,” Webb concluded.

But I found this. One blogger, BigSkyPolitics, did a bit of research and finds Zinke to the left of Boehner. It’s important to scrutinize these guys. Accepting on blind faith is what got us in this trouble.

Montana’s lone Congressman, Ryan Zinke, has recently been floated as a possible candidate for House Speaker. Apparently, the Congressman is taking the possibility of a campaign for the Speakership seriously and may throw his hat in the ring.Zinke’s leadership as Navy Seal propelled him to victory in 2014, and he–and others–think his leadership skills are exactly what are needed to right the Republican House Caucus.I think this idea is crazy for lots of reasons, and I’ve gone on the record as to why I don’t think it’s a good idea or feasible (here and here). But to be clear: Zinke’s leadership skills are not the problem.One item I did not mention in my interviews is the Congressman’s ideology relative to this peers in the House Republican caucus because I had not reviewed the data. Now that I have, I can say with some confidence, that the Congressman’s ideology would present a serious problem in any Speakership bid. And, contrary to a recent press release from the Montana Democratic Party, it’s not because Congressman Zinke is a “Tea Party sympathizer.” Instead, Congressman Zinke might be too liberal to be Speaker of the House.On this blog, I have long referenced the DW-NOMINATE scores produced by political scientists Keith Poole and his colleagues over at voteview.com. Using roll call votes cast, Poole and his fellow number crunchers develop a measure of ideology arrayed along a left-right dimension that plots each member of the Senate and House from most liberal to most conservative, roughly constrained at -1 for the most liberal member and +1 for the most conservative. In the past, these data have only been available after a congress has concluded. Now, however, they have developed a measure of ideology which they update weekly once roll call votes have been concluded.I downloaded these weekly DW-Common Space scores earlier this week (available here), stripped out the Senate, and then calculated the mean ideology score for the House Republicans and then the House Freedom Caucus (using wikipedia’s membership list to determine who was in the caucus). I then plotted those values along with the ideology scores of every conceivable speaker candidate from least conservative to most conservative. The results are reported below. Click on the chart for the best view.

As is plain to the reader, Congressman Zinke is well to the left of the House Freedom Caucus, slight to the left of the average Republican member, and–among all the possible Speaker candidates mentioned–the second most liberal to Congressman Greg Walden, the NRCC chair from Oregon. He is more liberal than Congressman McCarthy, who withdrew from the speakership race. And, he is certainly more liberal than Congressman Ryan, who, according to The New York Times, is possibly too liberal for some members of the very conservative House Freedom Caucus.Congressman Zinke will not be Speaker of the House. He’s simply too liberal for House Republicans.

So, do your own analysis and leave your comments below. What do you think? Is Zinke a candidate for the Speaker’s seat, in your opinion. Please share the info. Being informed and engaged is the only way to stop the slide into a socialist state.

And because it’s important to communicate with the elected, inside the beltway, Contact Rep. Jim Jordan and let him know what you think. He’s the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. Your opinion is important!