Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

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Palin illustrates GOP affliction

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You might be wondering: Just how messed up is today’s Republican Party?

I might have an example to share with you.

The former half-term Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, said she’s going to work to defeat House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s upcoming Republican primary.

Why would the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee do such a thing? Because the speaker says he cannot “yet” support the probable 2016 GOP presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Palin has endorsed Trump. Ryan has so far declined. It’s not clear that he ever will. Why do you suppose the speaker is withholding his support?

My guess is that Trump isn’t a “real Republican,” that he doesn’t adhere sufficiently to basic Republican principles to suit the speaker.

Palin calls herself a true-blue Republican. But she’s backing Trump. Now she wants to work against a fellow true GOP believer, Ryan.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/08/politics/sarah-palin-paul-ryan-paul-nehlen-endorsement/index.html

As near as most of us can tell, the only principle to which Trump holds dear is to himself. I believe that’s why he’s been labeled a narcissist.

Sure, it’s appealing to a lot of Republican “base” voters who like how Trump “tells it like it is.” Someone, though, has to explain to me what “it” really is.

Trump and Ryan plan to meet this week, as I understand it. Will they settle their differences? Don’t look for a kumbaya moment after their meeting.

As for Palin, I guess she’s trying to make herself relevant yet again by seeking to defeat the nation’s most powerful Republican politician.

What she is managing to do, though, is demonstrate — as if it needed further demonstration in the context of this year’s presidential primary season — how dysfunctional this once-great political party has become.

 

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Now, here’s a political dilemma

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My dictionary defines “conundrum” most succinctly.

“A riddle; a dilemma.”

By that definition, the Republican Party is facing a classic conundrum with its presumptive nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Do the conservative purists who run he party want to stick with their guy — who they detest — and watch him lead the party to a potentially historic defeat? Or do they look for an alternative, a true believer, to run as an independent candidate and then assure that historic loss?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/278941-third-party-push-gaining-steam

The Hill reports that the third-party push is “gaining steam” within the ranks of the GOP.

The publication says the push got some added juice when House Speaker Paul Ryan said he cannot support Trump’s nomination. At least not yet. Trump’s got to “unify” the party, Ryan said.

Frankly, I don’t care which way the GOP goes as it struggles with this, um, dilemma.

Were the party brass to ask me, though, I’d possibly advise them to back their guy. Stand by their nominee and then set out to rebuild the party once the ballots are counted in November.

The Republican Party as many of us have known and respected — if not loved — appears to be drawing its final breaths.

It’s no longer even the party of Ronald Reagan, let alone the party of Abraham Lincoln. It’s the party of Trump. Think about that for a moment.

A man with zero government experience — at any level — is about to become the party’s nominee for president of the United States. By almost every calculation imaginable, he is patently unfit for the office he seeks. Qualifications? He possesses none of them.

The fitness level, though, is even more frightening.

Either way the party goes, from my perspective — and factoring in my own bias — the GOP is headed for the political boneyard. A third-party/independent bid by a true believer merely seals the party’s fate.

I’ve long favored a robust two-party system. I like having two healthy parties argue policy differences in public. I’ve grown used to divided government, but prefer it to actually work, to function productively. We haven’t seen much productivity in the past eight or 10 years.

And, yes, Democrats bear some responsibility for the stalemate as well.

Maybe once the smoke clears from the upcoming election, we’ll find a Republican Party ready to reach out and re-engage in the act of governing.

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GOP’s presumed nominee is looking for love

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Donald J. Trump has a problem.

Actually, he has quite a few.

One of them is the lack of love coming his way from the so-called Republican Party “establishment” he must have if he has a chance of becoming the next president of the United States.

Get a load of this: U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan — the nation’s most powerful Republican — has said he cannot support his party’s presumed presidential nominee.

Why? He doesn’t represent the kinds of values Ryan wants him to represent. Trump is showing zero ability to unify the party, which also must happen if he intends to sidle into the Oval Office next January.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-paul-ryan-jab-at-each-other-deepening-fracture-in-gop/ar-BBsHgXZ?ocid=spartandhp

Trump is at odds with GOP orthodoxy on things such as trade, entitlement spending and foreign policy.

So, how does the nominee-in-waiting earn the speaker’s support? How does he pivot in the correct direction? Does a sudden change in philosophy — as if Trump actually has one — suggest insincerity? What’s more, does the speaker’s about-face look equally phony?

The Republican Party is about to nominate someone with the highest negative ratings in memory. The negative vibe is coming from within the very party Trump wants to represent in the fall campaign against the Democrats.

Here’s the best part: Trump now says he doesn’t support Ryan’s agenda. Someone needs to remind the presumptive nominee that the speaker of the House arguably wields at least as much power as the president of the United States.

Does he need proof of that? He ought to ask the man who occupies the Oval Office at the moment.

As the Chicago Tribune reports: “Whether Ryan’s conditions will be met by Trump remain to be seen. The businessman has shown only modest interest in hewing to party norms, and many observers do not expect him to do so now.”

There, folks, lies the problem that confronts the next GOP presidential nominee.

 

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Speaker fails to perform ‘basic’ task

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Paul Ryan spoke the truth when, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, he said the federal government must perform its basic function, which he said is to approve a budget.

Now that he’s speaker of the House, Ryan is finding matters are getting complicated.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/paul-ryan-no-budget-votes-222270

Speaker Ryan said he lacks the votes to approve a federal budget.

He’s battling the TEA Party wing of the GOP, which wants to stick to the sequester provision that allows across-the-board cuts in many government programs.

Oh, the divisions within the Republican House caucus are deep and wide — and they might be getting deeper and wider.

What’s the speaker to do? How does he get his fellow Republicans to speak with a single voice? Isn’t that what leaders do?

Well, he’s finding himself in the same predicament that bedeviled his predecessor as speaker, John Boehner, who ended up getting so fed up with the TEA Party that he gave up the speakership — and then quit the House of Representatives.

Governing involves compromise. It means all sides give a little. Sure, they can cling to their principles.

The speaker, though, is unable to lean on House Democrats to bail him out. Why? That toxic environment on Capitol Hill has become seemingly terminal.

Government cannot function under those conditions.

 

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Ryan settles it: He’s will not accept it

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I’ve been waiting for this declaration.

Today, it finally came from U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who declared that he will not accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination if it’s offered to him.

There. It’s a done deal.

Ryan’s declaration spells out a gloomy prospect for the Republican Party. It’s going to nominate — more than likely — one of two men who hold tremendous negative ratings among rank-and-file voters.

Donald J. Trump will go to the GOP convention with more delegates than anyone else. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will show up with the second-most delegate stash.

Neither of these fellows is going to defeat probable Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton, although surely their partisans will argue differently.

Ryan might have been able to rescue his party from what could turn out to be an electoral landslide loss. He’d bobbed, weaved, dodged and danced all over the question about whether he’d be open to a draft at the convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Count me out,” he said today. The convention should nominate someone who “actually ran for the job,” he said.

Don’t misread my intention here.

I don’t think Paul Ryan should become the next president. I voted against the ticket on which he ran in 2012 as the VP nominee with GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

It would have been a fascinating development in the extreme, though, to see whether the convention could turn to him as a sort of political savior.

It won’t happen.

Now the party is left with a sour choice.

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Intrigue builds around Speaker Ryan

ryan

Oh, how I love the intrigue that’s building around House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Will he “save” the Republican Party by emerging in Cleveland as the party’s compromise candidate for president of the United States?

Is the speaker going to toss aside every one of his (half-hearted) statements of non-interest in seeking the presidency?

This is fabulous! I am not going to predict what Ryan will do, but it certainly has me licking my chops at the chaos that would develop if the speaker actually jumps in.

Ryan keeps saying most of the things that would suggest he’s not going to run. But there remains wiggle room in every one of his so-called statements. The room ain’t huge. He’s not going to shake his booty while saying these things.

Every pundit since shortly after the Civil War keeps waiting for the so-called Shermanesque statement. You know what I mean. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman said, “If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve.”

Everything the speaker has said so far falls so far short of that categorical disavowal of any interest in running for the presidency.

He told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt today that “you have to run for president to be president. I am not running for president. Period. End of story.”

He is “not running for president.” Isn’t that what he said? It’s tantamount to the standard dodge that pols use when they don’t “intend to run.”

Let’s parse that for a second. I take that to mean that Ryan “is not running” today, in the present tense. He says not a single thing about what he might do this summer.

The only possible circumstance that is going to quell this “draft Ryan” talk is if Donald J. Trump wins enough delegates to sew up on the nomination on the first ballot.

Let’s remember that the speaker said he didn’t want to be speaker, either. Then the Republican House caucus drafted him to take the job as the nation’s top GOP elected official.

And the intrigue will continue.

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Ryan: We’re heading for ‘divisiveness’ as a nation

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Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan is partially correct when he says the nation “is becoming divisive.”

I believe we’re already there, Mr. Speaker.

It’s not a condition that has just developed overnight, or certainly during the current election cycle.

It seems to my reckoning to have its roots in the 2000 election season, when a candidate for president was elected by the narrowest margin imaginable — and under circumstances that to this day hasn’t been accepted by many millions of Americans.

George W. Bush won the presidency after the Supreme Court stopped the recounting of ballots in Florida. The Texas governor had 537 more votes than Al Gore in that state. He won that state’s electoral votes, giving him the election — even though Gore had amassed more popular votes nationally than Bush.

For the record, I’ve never doubted the legitimacy of Bush’s election as president. The constitutional system worked.

But …

The spillover through the next several elections has seen a palpable division among Americans.

The current campaign has delivered an intense ratcheting up of the division that’s been there for some time now.

I’m not a fan of the speaker, but I do applaud him for speaking to our national idealism. He clearly was taking dead aim at the tone being delivered on the campaign trail by Donald J. Trump, who he didn’t mention by name. Everyone in the congressional conference room who heard Ryan knew of whom he was speaking.

As Politico described Ryan’s remarks: “He decried identity politics, criticizing those who pit groups of Americans against each other. He said the nation’s political system doesn’t need to be this bad. He accused both parties of staying comfortably in their corners, only talking to those who agree with them.”

Ain’t that the truth?

There once was a time when members of Congress — from both parties — talked openly with each other about how to legislate for the good of their states or the country. The Texas congressional delegation was known to have bipartisan breakfasts weekly, with House members breaking bread with each other and talking about issues that needed attention.

It doesn’t happen these days.

Instead, we’re seeing and hearing candidates and their rhetoric demonizing “the other side.” The No. 1 instigator of this campaign-trail anger is the GOP’s leading presidential candidate — Trump.

Ryan’s message will not resonate with the segment of the population that has bought into the Us vs. Them mantra that Trump and others are promoting. Ryan is now seen as a member of the hated “establishment.”

Ryan said: “What really bothers me the most about politics these days is this notion of identity politics. That we’re going to win election by dividing people. That we’re going to win by talking to people in ways that divide them and separate them from other people. Rather than inspiring people on our common humanity, on our common ideals, on our common culture, on things that should unify us.”

Is his message too sunny, too optimistic, too idealistic?

For the sake of our political future, I hope not.

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Trump confounds foes on all sides

trump and carson

Just how wacky is this presidential campaign?

I cannot identify any single source, but it seems as though we can find some element of that wackiness in this scenario.

Donald J. Trump is getting pounded by foes on both ends of the spectrum as he continues to lead the way among the Republican Party presidential candidates.

Consider this, for instance.

Intellectual conservatives say Trump isn’t one of them. They point to his statements in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion; they take note of his stance in favor of universal health care; they question why he has said President Bush “lied” the nation into fighting the Iraq War.

He’s not a true Republican, let alone a conservative Republican, which is where the party establishment has been leaning for the past decade or two.

The party establishment cannot stomach the idea of Trump being the party nominee. They fear what that would mean for the party’s control of the U.S. Senate and in the many statewide races across the country. Trump cannot possibly lead the Republican slate of candidates, they say.

Then we have those on the other end. I’m one of those folks.

Trump’s public presence is a ghastly reminder of how ignorant he is about government. He doesn’t understand the limits of the presidency. Trump’s stated intention is to do all manner of things by himself, or so one could be led to assume.

Many of us are horrified at the insults he has hurled: at a TV news anchor, at disabled people, at a U.S. senator’s distinguished military service, at voters of Iowa, at all of his political foes, at Hispanics.

He recently actually threatened the speaker of the House of Representatives, fellow Republican Paul Ryan, by saying he could pay a price if he and Trump don’t get along.

And, oh yes, there’s that feigned ignorance of who ex-Klansman David Duke is and what the organization to which he once belonged stands for.

Those on the right and those on the left cannot stand this guy.

But he’s leading the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination. Who’s voting for him?

Evangelical voters are giving him a pass for his acknowledged extramarital affairs. Hard-core Republicans are backing him because he “tells it like it is.”

They’re fed up with “politics as usual.”

Well, what they’re likely to get with Donald Trump is a brand new kind of politics never before seen.

You want wackiness? This guy is delivering it.

 

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Trump now challenges the speaker of the House

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House Speaker Paul Ryan today laid out an interesting challenge to the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidate.

He said Donald J. Trump needs to condemn the politics and policies of the Ku Klux Klan, which Trump has failed to do with anything resembling clarity. The Republican Party, said the GOP speaker, does not stand for bigotry, hatred and racism.

Trump’s response?

He said he doesn’t know the speaker but expects to get along with him once the two men get acquainted. If they don’t, said Trump, then Ryan could have some trouble.

Whoa!

Let’s hold on.

As MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell noted this evening, the speaker of the House of Representatives has far more power than the president of the United States. Thus, the GOP frontrunner needs to take care if he’s going to “threaten” the Man of the House.

Why? The House generates all tax legislation. Plus, as O’Donnell noted, speakers of the House have the ability to make life quite uncomfortable for presidents. Think of what the House did to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal; think also of what the House did to President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. Nixon nearly got impeached; Clinton actually was impeached.

Donald Trump needs to learn to make nice. Then again, if he had any understanding of how government actually works, he would know better than to threaten the man who runs one half of a co-equal branch of government.

 

 

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House OKs another waste-of-time measure

obamacare-1

Here we go again.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The House vote comes after the Senate approved the measure earlier.

Speaker Paul Ryan blustered that the measure is going to President Obama’s desk — where it faces a certain veto.

The president’s signature effort is in no danger of being overturned.

Which begs the question: Why is Congress continuing to waste the public’s time and money on these efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act?

Oh, I think I know.

Republicans who control both congressional chambers want to make political hay. They want to keep hammering at a law they detest because, they say, it expands the federal government.

Well, the ACA also does something else. It provides health insurance to roughly 17 million Americans who beforehand didn’t have it. They couldn’t afford it. They were denied medical care because they couldn’t afford to pay for it. The ACA now provides insurance.

Repeal the law? Sure. And replace it with . . . what, exactly?

House members and senators will get the veto that the president promises. They’ll be unable overturn the veto because Republicans lack the two-thirds majority in both houses to do it.

So, the dance continues.

Will someone tell the band to stop playing? Please?