Paul Ryan Needs Trump More Than Trump Needs Ryan

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Oct 10, 2016 at 5:56 PM

Paul Ryan Needs Trump More Than Trump Needs Ryan

By Harry Enten

Filed under 2016 Election

 

House Speaker Paul Ryan is not a big fan of Donald Trump — that much is clear. He refused to back Trump during the Republican primaries and then held out on endorsing him even after Trump became the presumptive nominee. But eventually, Ryan did get behind Trump. And now, even after video of Trump bragging about being able to commit sexual assault has come to light, Ryan said he won’t defend Trump, but he has refused to unendorse the GOP nominee. Trump responded by attacking Ryan on Twitter.

 

A reasonable person might ask why, if Ryan was reluctant to support Trump to begin with, the speaker of the House isn’t washing his hands of the whole Trump campaign.

 

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But the answer is simple: Republican voters like Trump; Ryan risks losing the support of rank-and-file GOPers if he hits Trump too hard.

 

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Related...another view

Trump Doesn’t Care Whether the GOP Keeps Congress
Better Democrats control it than Republicans who would dare criticize him.
Ben Shapiro
October 12, 2016

For the entirety of the general election cycle, we’ve heard Donald Trump and his supporters claim that conservatives have no choice but to support him. After all, Trump said, he would appoint a fifth conservative justice to the Supreme Court (never mind that Justice Roberts is at best a mixed bag) and build a wall (never mind that deportations are the most critical element of any immigration policy). Trump defenders continually beat the drums on this: Sure, you might not be able to trust Trump, but you could trust Hillary to do the wrong thing on such issues. That made Trump the safest bet.

On Sunday and Monday, the Trump team itself utterly destroyed this argument.

We know Trump doesn’t care one iota about conservatism because he doesn’t care one iota about whether Republicans carry the Senate or the House. In order for Trump to implement anything remotely approaching a serious conservative agenda, he’d have to have a significant Republican majority in both houses of Congress. No Republican Senate majority, no Scalia-like justice. No House majority, no wall.

Trump knows that. But he’s now initiated a full-scale war against active Republican candidates simply to gratify his ego, blistered from a lifetime of emotional masturbation. He’s less interested in governing as a conservative than in grabbing dissenting Republicans by the . . . well, you know.

 

(Snip)