Paul Ryan at 9-1 Odds for GOP Nom

House Speaker Paul Ryan keeps saying he doesn’t want to be president, but people laying down actual money increasingly view him as a viable option: One bookie site puts the odds at 1 in 9 that he’ll be the GOP nominee.

The British betting site Coral sees the Wisconsin Republican tailing the three candidates who actually are running — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, in that order. Other bookies view the race similarly. Seven firms lists Ryan’s odds at 1 in 10; another four list the odds at 1 in 12. Still, high odds when an actual candidate, John Kasich is 2 in 13 — so 1 in 6.5.

Ryan’s odds are the kind many of the Republicans who actually ran would have killed for, and it reflects a growing groundswell among Establishment Republicans for an alternative to Trump and Cruz, who have won most of the delegates.

That fits with the reporting of Robert Costa, a Washington Post journalist, who said Tuesday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that Cruz would stop being useful to #NeverTrump supporters if the mogul were not in the race.

“The sites would be trained on Cruz,” he said. “I think if Trump dropped out of the race, you’d see a real scramble and Kasich, actually, could get some momentum … If Trump dropped out of the race, let’s say in the next month, I think eyes would turn maybe to a new candidate to enter the race to be a write-in in the California primary in early June to try to fight into the convention, because Cruz is well-liked by many in the Establishment right now because he’s anti-Trump and able to beat Trump, perhaps, in some states, but not because he’s beloved.”

[lz_table title=”Odds of Ryan as Republican Nominee” source=”oddschecker.com”]Company,Ryan’s Odds
Coral,1 in 9
BoyleSports,1 in 10
BetVictor,1 in 10
PaddyPower,1 in 10
Ladbrokes,1 in 10
Sports Winner,1 in 10
Betfair,1 in 10
[/lz_table]

Cruz trails Trump by a wide margin in votes and states won, but his campaign has been hard at work trying to place friendly delegates at the Republican National Convention. That includes some delegates who will be bound to Trump on the first ballot but who could dessert him if Trump fails to lock down the nomination by the end of primary voting.

Stephen Moore, senior economic contributor at FreedomWorks, said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that the nomination should go to whichever candidate wins the most delegates. Maneuvering to drop in Ryan or another non-candidate after multiple ballots that the convention would turn off millions of Republicans — himself, included.

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“If the Republican Establishment tries to steal this election from Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, whichever of the two is the winner in this race, I am burning my RNC card and I will never vote for the Republicans again,” he said. “This is thievery. This is stealing. This is disenfranchising millions and million of voters.”

Then again, Trump and Cruz supporters have nothing to worry about since Ryan is not a candidate, right? Costa said Ryan’s denials have a familiar ring.

“Ryan said he didn’t want to be speaker; he’s now third in line for the presidency,” he said.