In endorsing Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan argued that he believed the presumptive Republican nominee could be a partner in advancing a serious conservative policy agenda as president.
But Ryan is utterly delusional.
Trump, who has made a mockery out of policy and has explicitly and repeatedly rejected the philosophy of limited government throughout his campaign, won’t pursue anything resembling a serious reform agenda even if elected.
In the more likely event that Trump is defeated in November, having endorsed him, Ryan will lose credibility to rebuild the GOP. Instead, he will forever be tainted by his support for Trump.
As Ryan has risen in prominence within the Republican Party, he has drawn hyperbolic reactions, with people either anointing him as some kind of hero or ominous villain to conservatives. The truth is, he has always been somebody who has walked the tight rope between being a party loyalist and a conservative policy crusader.
On the one hand, he pushed ideas like entitlement reform into the mainstream when they were considered a third rail of politics. On the other hand, he voted to vastly expand entitlements by voting for President Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan.
His party loyalty helped him rise through the Republican ranks, but having gotten into leadership positions, he convinced the party to adopt bolder proposals and, as speaker, has been committed to outlining a broad and specific policy agenda.
So, in some sense, Ryan’s embrace of Trump is a natural progression of his long-time strategy of trying to be in the best possible position to advance his ideas. In this case, the reasoning is that Hillary Clinton would never sign on to a House conservative agenda, but Trump would or at least might.
Ryan’s fantasy is that if elected, the House could pass legislation that Trump will be motivated to sign. But the very fact that he’s been cowed into endorsing Trump argues against that.
To review, on May 5, Ryan declared that he wasn’t ready to endorse Trump. Within hours, Trump fired back in a statement claiming: “I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.”
Less than a month later, Trump has not made any concessions to Ryan. He hasn’t changed his policy ideas. He hasn’t become a more serious person. He hasn’t adopted a different tone. Yet without anything changing, Ryan is now ready to jump aboard the Trump train.
So, given that Ryan wasn’t able to get Trump to adopt any sort of changes as a candidate, what makes him think that Trump would sign his legislative agenda into law? To put it more succinctly: If Ryan can’t stand up to candidate Trump, why should we expect he’d stand up to a President Trump?
Trump has completely rejected Ryan’s approach to governing. He’s made a mockery out of policy. Trump has talked about raising the minimum wage, the virtues of socialized medicine, renegotiating debt as if it were one of his failing businesses, returning to a 19th century view of trade policy, and revisiting First Amendment protections on press freedom. Though he has largely said he doesn’t want to touch entitlements, Ryan’s signature issue, to the extent Trump wants to do anything, it’s to fix drug prices through Medicare. (One of the ways that Ryan, in the past, has justified voting for Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan is precisely to avoid a Democratic alternative from getting through what would have done precisely this).
All of this assumes that Trump is elected. In the far more likely scenario that Clinton beats Trump, Ryan’s shortsightedness will come back to haunt the GOP and do lasting damage to his policy agenda.
For all Ryan’s talk of wanting to embrace a more open Republican Party that appeals to everybody, by endorsing Trump, he is turning a blind eye to Trump’s disgusting record of racism and sexism. Sure, Ryan may argue that he’ll choose a different tone than Trump, but at the end of the day, the message has been sent: Bigotry is something that can be tolerated within the GOP by its most prominent leaders. This reality will taint Ryan and the policies he pursues for a long time to come.
As Republican speaker of the House and chair of the convention that is to nominate Trump, Ryan was obviously in an awkward spot. But to borrow from Hyman Roth — this is the business he has chosen. It no doubt would have been difficult to avoid endorsing Trump, but it would have been an act of true leadership that might have salvaged something good out of the wreckage that is today’s Republican Party.
Instead, Trump’s toxic brand has now infected yet another Republican.
