Paul Ryan gave two speeches in Cleveland tonight. The first was a half-hearted attempt to put a positive sheen on the nomination Ryan himself gaveled in two hours earlier. The GOP, he said, remains “the party of Lincoln,” and this year’s contentious primary contests were actually “signs of life” in a party that is “not going through the motions.”

Ryan’s second speech was vintage Paul Ryan, e.g., Ryan circa 2012. In a “contest of ideas,” the Republican party has the advantage. The GOP abides by “fundamentals that go back to the Founding generation.” The federal government should be “the protector of our liberties”; it should “act as a servant,” not a master.

The problem, of course, is that these were the same speech.

There is simply no getting around the fact that almost all of the things Paul Ryan believes in, Donald Trump doesn’t. Trump does not care about smaller government, or a free market, or the restraints imposed by the Constitution (in any of its 12 articles). He has no time for “empathy” or “respect.” And in the “contest of ideas,” he’s got about as much to offer as Homer Simpson.

Ryan clearly thinks that those deficiencies are not fatal. “Only with Donald Trump and Mike Pence do we have a chance at a better way,” he declared, alluding to his “Better Way” platform, a set of proposals released over the past two months that aims to provide conservatives with a wide-ranging, forward-thinking policy vision. And perhaps that’s right. Perhaps a President Trump could be instrumentalized.

Other outcomes seem more likely, though.

To steal a phrase from the Marxists, Ryan’s address served mainly to “heighten the contradictions.” The speaker’s agenda and his nominee’s are clearly at odds, and even if the Republican party were to incline toward unity, as Ryan encouraged, the question is now starker than ever: Unity with what?