Washington Free Beacon reporter Lachlan Markay anticipated Paul Ryan's run for speakership and predicted that Donald Trump would eventually hit a support ceiling Tuesday on Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Markay said that Ryan's recent meetings with groups such as the House Freedom Caucus are a sign that he will run.
"It's been the waiting game for the last couple weeks, but I think all indications are that he is going to run. As you mention, meeting with the House Freedom Caucus, and he met with a group of moderate Democrats called the Tuesday Group," he said. "[He's] sort of trying to put feelers out there and make sure he's going to be able to actually get something done as speaker."
According to Markay, Ryan has a well-known agenda that the speakership could allow him to enact.
"We all know he wants to push tax reform through. He wanted to do that at the Ways and Means Committee, but there will be opportunities for him procedurally to shepherd that through as speaker," he said.
Markay also said that Ryan could gain members' support without coming down on controversial issues such as amnesty or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, since the House Freedom Caucus has mainly procedural, rather than ideological, grievances with the current Republican conference.
By "returning to regular order in the house, allowing amendments, sort of devolving power back to committee chairs, things like that," Markay said, Ryan could re-assure members that his will not be a "leadership-driven caucus" like that of John Boehner.
Dobbs then asked Markay about the future of the Republican race, to which Markay said that the race is "turning conventional wisdom on its head."
"You have anti-establishment Republicans who are coalescing behind the candidate, and establishment Republicans are sort-of split among Bush, Rubio, Fiorina, Kasich, Christie," he said.
However, he said that Trump is "approaching his ceiling of support," pointing to the latest poll out of New Hampshire that shows that middle-of-the-road Republicans will stick with an alternative to Trump when push comes to shove.
"Even Cruz supporters and Carson supporters—70 plus percent of them would back Rubio over Trump if it came to that in a head-to-head matchup in the state," he said.