When you’re from Wisconsin, you learn not to take everything Republican Congressman Paul Ryan says at face value.
Although I’ve been urging Republicans to take a principled stand against their embarrassing soon-to-be presidential nominee Donald Trump, I’m not nearly as convinced as much of the national media that Ryan has suddenly become a shining profile in courage against Trump.
It is true Ryan generated positive headlines for himself by going on national television to publicly reverse his previous position that he would support Trump if he became the Republican nominee.
But Ryan isn’t opposing Trump yet, mind you. He’s just withholding his endorsement and urging the nominee to clean up his act and stop saying so many offensive, divisive things right out loud.
“I hope to support our nominee,” Ryan said. “I’m just not there right now.”
The media described Ryan’s interview on CNN as “a bombshell” and “a stunning rebuke” to Trump, but it has to be one of the mildest political bombshells of all time.
More likely, it’s simply a calculated move by Ryan to try to distance himself from the flying shrapnel expected to be created by a spectacular political disaster for the Republican Party in November.
As usual, Ryan dresses up his own political self-interest with sanctimonious choirboy rhetoric.
“I desperately want to see us [Republicans] unify on principles and ideas and policies and the agenda, and win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of Americans and speak to everybody,” Ryan said.
“And I’m hoping that’s where this goes. But I don’t know that that’s where this is going to go.”
If you look closely, Ryan stopped well short of suggesting there’s actually anything wrong with Trump as the party’s nominee.
Ryan even seems to acknowledge Trump’s success in employing racial hatred, religious bigotry, crude schoolyard taunts and demagoguery to win the Republican nomination. Ryan just thinks it’s time for Trump to pretend to be a little more respectable now that he’s the nominee.
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“The question is, can our presumptive nominee turn things around, unify and have a different kind of cadence going forward?” Ryan said. “It’s time to go from tapping anger to channeling that anger into solutions. It’s time to set aside bullying, to set aside belittlement.”
So was it OK for Trump to tap into racist anger previously to win the nomination? Why is now the time to set aside bullying and belittlement if they were acceptable political tactics earlier?
Problems with Style, Not Substance
Trump didn’t invent the Republican Party’s appeal to racists. Richard Nixon created the Southern Strategy to attract bigoted white Democrats alienated by their party’s support for civil rights. Ryan’s hero Ronald Reagan fed it with urban legends about Chicago welfare queens and Ryan himself carried it into the present day describing leisurely, government-supported poor folks lolling about on hammocks.
Ryan’s real complaint is that Trump’s brazenly vulgar style is way too obvious. Ryan wants Trump to soften his tone to stop making mean-spirited, right-wing Republican ideas seem quite so nasty.
For years, Ryan has demonstrated the proper way to promote right-wing budgets and cruel social policies so they sound as if they’re based on lofty, Constitutional principles and sound fiscal management instead of simply perpetuating racial and economic inequality in America.
Ryan looks directly into TV cameras with big eyes solemnly warning of a coming economic apocalypse unless America eviscerates government programs for people in need. Then Ryan’s vicious House budgets divert the savings from slashing those programs into bigger tax cuts for the wealthy instead of reducing deficits.
One of the biggest policy differences between Ryan and Trump has nothing to do with immigration, banning Muslims or pandering to white supremacists.
It’s Ryan’s insistence that Social Security and Medicare have to be drastically reduced while Trump, in one of his few decent policy positions, opposes massive, destructive changes to those highly successful government programs that have benefited millions of aging Americans for decades.
Trump isn’t really interested in Ryan’s style tips. Trump won the Republican nomination by ignoring Ryan’s subtle, coded appeals to racism and bigotry.
Trump found Republican voters responded even more enthusiastically to racist white anger bellowed openly from the stage at raucous rallies where hate-pumped supporters could work off a little steam by punching an occasional black demonstrator in the face.
There’s probably no way Ryan can lie low enough this year to totally protect his own political future. The Trump camp already has issued vague threats about challenging Ryan’s role as Republican convention chairman and possibly even as speaker of the House.
Trump says he agreed to meet with Ryan this week “before we go our separate ways” as a courtesy to his new, best little buddy, Ryan’s fellow Wisconsinite Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
But no one really knows what to expect next when you poke a dangerous Republican nominee with a stick.
