House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday consummated his break with Donald Trump, urging voters to elect a Republican Congress as a shackle on Hillary Clinton.
In a speech to an audience of Wisconsin college students, Ryan began laying the foundation for a post-Trump Republican Party, signaling that he doesn’t expect his party’s presidential nominee to win the election.
The GOP under Trump has been defined by his garish personality.
The nominee has broken with years of Republican orthodoxy on domestic and foreign policy in favor of an agenda based on conspiracies about shadowy “globalists” that are destroying the U.S. from within.
The speaker is seeking to wrest control of the party from Trump’s populist grasp, and re-establish it as a vehicle for traditional conservative governance.
In doing so, Ryan also hopes to send the message that Trump’s coarse rhetoric and controversial conduct has worn out its welcome.
“The Speaker was saying this is what a Republican leader could look like; this is what matters to conservatives across the country — this is what many of us think the election should actually be about,” said a Republican insider in Washington, who requested anonymity because he did not want to be openly critical of Trump.
In the wake of revelations that Trump bragged about using his celebrity status to gain sexual favors from women, Ryan informed Republican lawmakers that he was washing his hands of the New York businessman and would spend the remainder of the campaign focusing on congressional races.
Ryan didn’t officially yank his endorsement, but said he would not defend Trump and instead focus on preserving GOP majorities in the House and Senate, the latter being particularly tenuous. The speaker’s pronouncement was less dramatic than it sounded.
Ryan has publicly criticized Trump repeatedly, both before and since he secured the nomination, battling with him over control of the party and what it stands for. Except for his speech at the Republican convention, the speaker hadn’t spent any time campaigning for Trump.
But Ryan’s speech Friday in Madison designated a final repudiation of the nominee. The speaker framed the final three weeks of the campaign, and the next four years, as Clinton liberalism that would run amok if congressional Republicans aren’t granted the political power to stop her.
Trump’s name, or the possibility of what Republicans might achieve with him as president, never arose.
“In the America we want, government exists to serve the people. And instead of lecturing us, our leaders listen to us and offer positive solutions,” Ryan said. “What vision do Hillary Clinton and her party offer the people? The America they want does not stand out. It is ordinary. There is a gloom and a grayness to things.”
“We want an America that values disruption and innovation,” Ryan added. “Take Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, great success stories of recent years, services that are just taking off, even in this sluggish economy. Well, guess what? One of the centerpieces of Clintonomics is to crack down on these companies.”
What was striking is that, with some exceptions, such as on taxes, Ryan could have delivered the same speech to set forth the differences between his vision of conservative Republicanism, versus the faults and failings of Trump’s populism.
The centerpiece of Trump’s economic agenda is more state control over the economy in the form of trade and immigration restrictions — and that was before he veered into conspiratorial rants about foreign subterfuge.
The wealthy real estate developer has vowed to forcibly prevent U.S. companies from moving or expanding overseas, and proposes to return the U.S. to its halcyon days of manufacturing through onerous tarrifs, even if its costs Americans more money for goods and services.
Simultaneously, Trump has questioned the value of U.S. leadership abroad and threatened to pull the country out of longstanding alliances that afford Washington influence over the global power structure.
Overall, Trump’s approach is antithetical to the type of innovative, free-market economics long championed by Republicans, not to mention robust U.S. diplomatic and military leadership overseas that has the defined the GOP for decades.
So in presenting voters a choice between Democratic control of Washington led by Clinton, and a Clinton White House with power checked by a Republican Congress, Ryan also was laying down a marker for defining conservative governance going forward — both at home and abroad.
“Regardless of what people think about the top of the ticket, we need a Congress that will be a check on whoever is president,” said Doug Sachtleben, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group that opposed Trump in the GOP primary.
