06.08.2016 08:53 AM

This was the talk of #Daisy10 last night

Ryan (1)

 

Most of our guests were appalled, and rightly so: “Trump’s a racist, but I won’t not support him.”  Personally, I think I see Ryan’s “strategy,” if you can call it that.

  • If Ryan withdraws his support for Trump, as one GOP Senator did yesterday, the default position is that he supports Hillary, or he is indifferent to the implications of her winning.
  • If Ryan doesn’t condemn Trump, as many in the GOP didn’t do yesterday, he risks being lumped in with the sonofabitch.

So, he chose a middle course: he did both.  Call Trump’s textbook racism “textbook racism,” but continue to support the racist.  That’s the only way, he figures, he can remain the candidate to beat President Hillary in 2020.

The problem? Paul Ryan is sucking and blowing at the same time.  He’s trying to be all things to all GOP people.

I don’t think it’ll work.  You?

 

11 Comments

  1. davie says:

    I am speculating, but I figure the GOP, including Ryan, have to start thinking about the way that a lot of ballots work down there, – and coat tails.
    Putting an ‘x’ by a Republican presidential nominee’s name will often lead to putting an ‘x’ by the names of all other GOP candidates down the list.

    Elect Clinton? Sure, She will do for females in America what Obama has done for Blacks.
    But, hey, USA will be catching up with almost half their Americas neighbours, as well as 8 or 9 Muslim countries around the planet.

  2. Eric Weiss says:

    The GOP is the party of racism and bigotry so he’ll never win the nomination anyway.

  3. JH says:

    I’m thinking the negative press helped this guy immensely with free PR. They also helped him gain support from the folks who hate both elite politicians and media. Argue if you will, but much the same thing happened with the Conservatives under Harper and helped them stay in power and become the top fund-raising political party in Canada.
    Watch what happens now as the anti-Trump media goes bonkers in the campaign. Hilary’s already got a likeability problem, do you really think the press frothing at the mouth over Trump will help her? I have my doubts.
    He’s very dangerous, but many just don’t trust the lady.
    This could get very tricky before its done.

  4. Luke says:

    I think, but don’t know of course, that a lot of voters will understand (not to say support) Ryan’s stance, for the same reasons you surmise he took the course he did. Whether they hold that against, I have no idea.

  5. doconnor says:

    Being all things to all people always worked before, but that was preTrump.

  6. Vancouverois says:

    It reminds me of Ignatieff’s “red door, blue door” non-answer on the coalition issue in 2011.

    There was a great cartoon about that, but I can’t seem to find it. 🙁

  7. Tiger says:

    I don’t think this is where he ends up at the end.

    I think there’ll come a time when Ryan cuts Trump loose.

  8. Scotian says:

    No.

    Ryan is shredding his moral authority as a principled conservative when he claims that he is supporting Trump because he can get better political programming passed with him despite his naked racist attacks on a sitting federal judge, and that despite Trump being an obvious loose cannon, being someone that not just places his private business concerns on the same par as the Presidency of the United States, but is willing to use unsupported smears rooted in racism to attack a distinguished federal court judge hearing a case against him, yet somehow Hillary Clinton is still the greater evil. I think even for many Hillary/Clinton haters that might be a bridge too far, and for the more principled conservatives that actually believe in their principles, that believe in the importance of prudence, stability, consideration, and deliberation for a chief executive of a nation let alone the one with the power of the USA, I think Hillary Clinton is going to start looking more and more attractive. As for the independents who aren’t on the extremes of either party but are truly centered between the GOP and Dems as their default, I have a hard time seeing those that are such and choose to be so finding what they see in Trump being more persuasive than what Hillary Clinton has shown time and time again to be. Whenever she has actually held office, be it the Senate or Sec of State she has had very high approval ratings, indeed, it has been formally acknowledged by the House GOP leadership that the entire point of the select Bengazhi committee was to bring those numbers down, and cost the former contender for the Speakership his chance at getting it because he pulled back that curtain.

    Ryan is trying to do something that simply cannot be sustained unless Donald Trump stays in the mold that he portrayed last night. How many people here seriously believe that Trump will become the default campaigning Trump versus the Trump that ran throughout the primary? I know that I believe that how someone has acted for the vast majority of their adult life by the time they get to his age are going to continue to act as such, and Trump has been that brash, blustery, and outrageous person that ran the primary, not the “Presidential” Trump that showed up last night (and I used quotes because others called that performance such, I would not). Ryan simply cannot maintain his reputation as one of the few truly principled conservatives while supporting Donald Trump, Trump will prove to be for conservative principles an acid from which their is no counter, and the damage he will wreak to such will be profound. Ryan is only the first example we will see, not the last I suspect.

  9. My name is Andrew says:

    People’s political memories are very short. A politician can redefine themselves in a short amount of time with the public.

  10. Francis says:

    Symptomatic of the far right narrative. You can’t simultaneously disavow bigotry while still support people who are perpetuating it because “at least they’re not the other guy”. That sort of contradictory behaviour only reinforces the cycle of complacent racism.

    Paul Ryan, like some of his other GOP colleagues, wants to explicitly condemn the behaviour/words of Trump’s without actually condemning the sentiments behind them. They reject the racist but not the racism — which is completely irreconcilable. Some, like Lindsey Graham, have chastised and rejected Trump completely; which is good. But it seems like those who rely on the angry, white-racist voting demographic that Trump has locked up, won’t go as far as Graham but rather choose to placate this voting block by not diminishing their opinions.

    Paul Ryan is learning why John Boehner hated his job. Being the top guy for the GOP involves seriously pretending like you don’t helm a completely unstable, nativist party while pandering to your vociferously unstable nativist base.

    The side-effect or by-product of this double speak is that its dumping rounds and rounds of ammunition into the Democrat camp in tight down-ticket races across the country. This is where Trump can really hurt the GOP. It forces Republicans to either get behind or get away from Trump’s opinions, depending on where their seat is and how this kind of rhetoric plays in with their constituents. If you’re a Republican in a region where there are a large number of Latinos, Muslims, Blacks, educated women, or other ethnic minority groups then you’re in trouble.

  11. Bluegreenblogger says:

    Dunno if it will hurt Ryan with hard core partisans. They are used to believing in contradictory things. For electors, they are going to be blasted with the word Racism for quite awhile. Are they going to remember Ryan’s stance in another 4 years? Probably not. It will seem picayune if they do remember. I think. I am not sure, but I THINK this is the beginning of the survival of the Republican Party. I guess the question is whether it will be a sawed off ‘rump’ or they retain the bulk of their organisation when Trump is done. Maybe it is time to end the Republican Party. Hell, maybe it’s time to kill off both Republican and Democrat party’s.

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