The House speaker’s view of 2016.
I hope I have appreciated the difficulty of Paul Ryan’s position. Over the weekend, I wrote a post that touched on this.
Ryan was between a rock and a hard place. Clearly, he had distaste for Donald Trump. (Ryan is a conservative, and a good Joe.) His endorsement was reluctant, it seemed. Forced.
It was wrong, in my opinion, because I think Trump is unfit to be president, and I would have expected Ryan to come to this judgment too. But I could understand.
Now, however, Ryan has jumped the shark, as I see it. He has assumed the last refuge of a Trumpian scoundrel. He is charging that he who does not support Trump, supports Hillary.
There are conservatives, like me, who won’t vote for either. We regard both nominees as unfit for the job — corrupt, dishonest, etc.
Ryan and other Trump supporters say that my non-vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary. Okay. Is my non-vote for Hillary a vote for Trump?
You’re welcome, Trumpkins.
But forget me. What about Paul Ryan’s running mate from four years ago? Mitt Romney is strongly opposed to Trump. He gave the best anti-Trump speech of the season, I believe — a thoroughgoing indictment. Like me, Romney believes that Trump is grossly unfit to be president, in both mind and character.
So, according to the Ryan Rule, Mitt is a Hillary supporter? Must be. Which is a pathetic charge.
From what I can tell, Romney’s conscience will not allow him to vote for Trump or Hillary. (I wish he were running himself.) I doubt that Ryan is unable to understand this. I would be surprised if he couldn’t respect it.
Note, too, that Trump people have told us for months that they did not need our support, or want it. We were “GOPe,” past-it, yesterday’s news. “Cuck.” Romney had “choked like a dog,” in Trump’s characteristic language.
Moreover, Trump was bringing millions of new people to the polls — the previously dispossessed — and these millions would lift Trump to victory.
And now, if I don’t go to my polling place on the Upper West Side and put The Donald over the top in New York, I’m responsible for President Hillary?
I won’t be responsible for President Hillary. Neither will I be responsible for President Trump. I will vote for an honorable third candidate — if there is one — or wait for a better day.
Let me record, as I have in the past, that conservatives were working hard against Hillary back when the new GOP nominee, of the new GOP, was praising and funding her. And insisting that she be at his wedding, in the first pew.
No lectures, please. No scolding, Mr. Speaker.
Think of the Golden Rule, too. I would not ask Ryan to vote for anyone he found unconscionable.
Trump has physically mocked a physically handicapped person for the enjoyment of his audience. He said that John McCain was “not a war hero,” because he was captured. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
Well and good. Yes, McCain was shot down in Vietnam — on his 23rd bombing raid. Maybe Trump and his fans could give McCain credit for the first 22? Then McCain was tortured for five and a half years. He refused early release (offered because his dad was head of the Pacific Command).
Trump, meanwhile, received four student deferments. Later, he claimed that he had a “personal Vietnam.” That was dodging venereal disease when he was bedding his broads.
He insulted Carly Fiorina’s looks. He sneered about Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle. He suggested that Ted Cruz’s dad had a hand in the Kennedy assassination.
This is the kind of thing that Paul Ryan is asking me to vote for?
#share#Trump has praised Putin enthusiastically. Asked about Putin’s killing of political opponents, Trump responded, “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also.”
We have had this kind of moral equivalence — despicable — from the Left for decades. Now Ryan wants me to vote for it? And Romney to vote for it? And you to vote for it? He wants it in the Oval Office?
Trump has praised Saddam Hussein as a foe of terrorists. At the same time, he has damned our soldiers in Iraq as thieves. And said that George W. Bush lied us into war. And that Bush should have been impeached.
Does Ryan take that into consideration? What does he say about it?
Trump threatens to abandon South Korea and Japan, which would endanger our security. He threatens to get us into trade wars, which would damage our economy. He threatens to default on our debt.
He will not reform entitlements — because, in his mind, all we need to do is ferret out “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
And so on.
Today’s Republican party is much different from yesterday’s Republican party, of course. It is a party that George Will can’t belong to. This causes much of the Right to rejoice. Will is a conservative. He is not a nationalist, a populist, a protectionist, an isolationist, an “identitarian,” an “alt.” The Republican party is not for him.
Is it for Romney, indefinitely?
Say this for the unconservative, illiberal Right: At least they believe in something. That something, primarily, is “strength” — their version of it. What do Republicans in general stand for? Victory at the ballot box? Victory for what? To do what?
I would remind Ryan of this, too: They will always hate him. The Trumpites and “alts” and the rest. He could pour more love on Trump than Corey ever dreamed of, and they would still hate him, as “Paul Ryano,” at best.
In other words, Ryan can’t gain admirers, among the Trump crowd (I wouldn’t think). He can only lose admirers.
#related#I say, stump for Trump, if you must. But when it comes to charging conservative dissenters with being for Hillary — leave it to the Trump army. Leave it to Corey and the gang. It ought to be beneath Paul Ryan.
Earlier today, in light of Ryan’s recent remarks, David French tweeted, “As soon as he made that first endorsement, this was all-but-inevitable. The corruption spreads like a zombie virus.”
Yes. When I look today at Republican officialdom, I am dismayed. And I think of a phrase I heard from Fred Barnes, 30 years ago: “towers of jello.”
A month ago, Paul Ryan suggested that his colleagues should obey conscience, when it comes to Election 2016. That’s good advice for all Americans, I think.