Hours after Iowans propelled Sen. Ted Cruz to victory in the nation’s first caucus, House Speaker Paul Ryan called on the party to unify in order to win the White House in November, and admitted, “we are all angry.”
Ryan told reporters in Washington that the GOP needs to unify, just after he privately met with Republican lawmakers at Republican National Committee headquarters Tuesday morning.
“It’s time to unify as Republicans and conservatives,” Ryan said. “That is what we are going to do.”
Ryan also called on the party and voters to channel anger they feel against Washington, which has resulted in the rise in the polls of outsider candidates including Cruz and Donald Trump, who placed second in Iowa.
“Yeah, we are angry,” Ryan acknowledged. “But, the key is to take that anger and channel it constructively into action.”
Cruz, R-Texas, is largely despised by GOP leaders, particularly in the Senate, where he has broken decades-old protocol by bashing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and what he calls the “Washington cartel,” in Senate floor speeches and on the campaign stage.
Republicans were warned at their annual retreat last month that Cruz would be a drag on the GOP ballot, potentially hurting the election prospects for House and Senate Republicans.
But Ryan, R-Wis., has refrained from directly criticizing Cruz. Instead, he has offered veiled condemnation of the Cruz and Trump approaches, which have generated excitement among the Republican base by bashing the party and party lawmakers like Ryan.
Ryan and House GOP lawmakers plan to put out a Republican agenda this year that they can present to voters ahead of the November election. They say the agenda would give the public a preview of how a Republican-led House, Senate and White House would lead the nation. There will be no anger in that message, Ryan said.
“Let’s go out and give a positive message, a hopeful message, an optimistic and inspirational message to our fellow citizens in America, that it does’t have to be this way,” Ryan said.
