Here’s the most interesting question that arose when Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump initially refused to endorse Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan for re-election and spent several days rubbing Ryan’s nose in it:
Is there any vicious, unacceptable political position Trump could take or cruel humiliation he could aim directly at Ryan personally that would cause the Wisconsin congressman to withdraw his endorsement of Trump for president?
Ryan says yes, that his endorsement is not “a blank check.” But all the evidence says that unless Trump commits a mass murder of Capt. Khan’s entire family in the middle of Fifth Avenue, Ryan’s with Trump all the way.
It’s become clear that Trump is not just a horrible candidate, but a horrible person. And it’s difficult to imagine Trump could be anything other than a horrible president. Just about everything that comes out of his mouth is either inaccurate or indecent.
It’s also clear that Paul Ryan knows this. That’s why Ryan finds it necessary to repeatedly repudiate Trump’s disturbing political views, vicious personal attacks and pandering to white supremacists.
Ryan cites Trump as a textbook example of a racist whose bigotry toward races and religions he wants to deport or ban from our country are un-American and unconstitutional. Ryan claims Trump’s ideas are not the values of the Republican Party.
Yet this is exactly the person Ryan endorses to become the next Republican president of the United States.
Of course, Ryan is not alone in taking that absurd, contradictory stand. That’s pretty much the go-to position for Republicans running for re-election this year.
Trump exposed the cowardice of most Republicans when he refused to endorse not only Ryan, but also Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who are facing difficult elections.
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All three embarrassed themselves by continuing to support Trump’s election even though he wasn’t supporting theirs. Then after those incumbents were sufficiently humiliated, Trump said, just kidding, and endorsed all three.
A White GOP Doesn’t Have a Future
The lame public excuse Republicans offer for supporting a nominee they all know is unfit to become president is that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would be even worse. Which is simply not true.
Ever since Republicans moved to the outermost fringes of the extreme right, they’ve tried to demonize the Democratic Party as some sort of alien, un-American, bomb-throwing, radical ideology, but that’s always been a lie.
Being a conventional progressive Democrat is still a perfectly acceptable political philosophy in this country, just like being a conventional conservative Republican used to be. And by any measure, Hillary Clinton is a conventional progressive Democrat.
That’s really what Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ primary challenge to Clinton was all about. His idealistic supporters wanted a political revolution, not progressive political evolution working for positive change within the system.
Clinton may be a lot of things Republicans don’t like, but she’s not a racist. And she’s not an un-American demagogue who doesn’t have a clue about human decency or our country’s fundamental principles.
Trump showed how little he knew about America when he attacked those Muslim-American parents who lost their Army captain son in Iraq, saying they had no right to publicly criticize his anti-immigration stand. The Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees every citizen that right.
Ryan has had the advantage of an extremely friendly media that continues to portray him as a good guy Republican who is trying to hold onto some personal integrity (and, not incidentally, power) at a time when Trump’s nomination is embarrassing the party.
But there are far darker reasons why Ryan will refuse to withdraw his endorsement of the party’s vile presidential nominee, no matter how much fear and hatred Trump tries to spread.
On television, Ryan plays a sincere, reasonable political leader who’s forced to speak out as his party’s offensive nominee repels more and more voters.
But behind Ryan’s façade lies a craven, right-wing politician who is carefully trying to separate himself from the party’s disastrous nominee without alienating any of Trump’s angry, white, racist supporters Ryan is counting on in the future when he’s the Republican nominee.
That is just the opposite of what a real Republican leader should be worrying about in a post-Trump era. The Republican Party will not have any future at all in an increasingly diverse nation if it continues narrowing its constituency to uneducated, aging, white males.
If Republicans are to survive a well-deserved massive defeat in November, they will have to begin rebuilding the party out of the ashes by casting out racism just like Democrats did in the 1960s.
For any legitimate political party to be successful it will need to be open to every gender, race and religion, just like America is.
Trump has no future in that Republican Party. But neither do cowardly Republican leaders like Ryan who clearly know how vile and un-American Trump is, but endorse him anyway.
