George Will: The ‘big price’ Paul Ryan has paid for supporting Donald Trump

[Machiavelli]

George F. Will
The Washington Post
June 6, 2016

The Caligulan malice with which Donald Trump administered Paul Ryan’s degradation is an object lesson in the price of abject capitulation to power. This episode should be studied as a clinical case of a particular Washington myopia — the ability of career politicians to convince themselves that they and their agendas are of supreme importance.

The pornographic politics of Trump’s presidential campaign, which was preceded by decades of ignorant bile (about Barack Obama’s birth certificate and much else), have not exhausted Trump’s eagerness to plumb new depths of destructiveness.

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Also published at Investor's Business Daily and National Review

[sinkspur]

Some say in extenuation of Ryan’s behavior that if he could not embrace Trump, he could not continue as speaker. But is Ryan, who was reluctant to become speaker, now more indispensable to the nation’s civic health than Trump is menacing to that health? Ryan could have enhanced that health by valuing it above his office.

The balless Republicans endorse a vicious, ignorant, impetuous, unconstitutional man who has dragged a personal grudge into the presidential campaign.  Lindsey Graham, to his credit, equates Trump with Joe McCarthy. 

I doubt Trump even knows who Joe McCarthy is.

[Chieftain]

Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, not the head of the Republican Party.  Donald Trump is running to be the defacto head of the Republican Party and will be should he be elected to the Presidency.

Obama is head of the Democrat Party by reason of being the sitting President.  Debby Blabbermouth Shultz runs the DNC, but Obama runs the overall Party.

Ryan already has Constitutional responsibilities that transcend the political race for the Presidency.  I understand why he would be uncomfortable with an outright endorsement of Trump.  I would wager most of the voting electorate will be holding their noses to vote (once again) for a candidate that is far from their favorite, yet still the lesser of two weevils...

Why should Speaker Ryan not be allowed to show a firm reluctance for someone who is so far outside the norm as to not even clearly understand who the Speaker is and why he is Constitutionally separate in many ways from the Presidency??

Of course we live in an age where people really think Bruce Jenner is a frackin' woman...

 

[sinkspur]

Unless Ryan withdraws his endorsement, everything Trump says from here on out sticks to Ryan like glue.

Does he have no shame?  Are there things more important than lying to yourself and the country?  Everyone knows Ryan despises Trump?  So why act as if he doesn't?

I'm with Lindsey Graham:  "There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary." -Lindsey Graham urging Rs to unendorse