David Michael Miller
Donald Trump put House Speaker Paul Ryan in a tough spot, but he also handed him a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Ryan held out for a little bit on endorsing the presumptive Republican nominee, but he eventually caved, offering Trump a tepid endorsement not in a splashy Washington press conference but quietly in the back pages of his hometown newspaper. Depending on how you want to look at it, what Ryan did was a smart calibration or the coward’s way out.
Ryan wants to have it both ways. He doesn’t want to upset his party’s base as it shamefully falls into line behind this egomaniac fascist. On the other hand, when he runs for president himself, Ryan doesn’t want to have every nutcase utterance of this man hung around his neck. Well, now that he’s endorsed Trump that is exactly what should — and probably will — happen.
Ryan wants to be thought of as a serious, earnest, thoughtful and optimistic man. But a man of ideas does not endorse a man of idiocy. A man of conservative principle does not acquiesce when the party of Lincoln becomes the party of Trump.
Imagine if it had been different. Imagine Ryan standing up proudly and saying that he just couldn’t stomach Trump carrying the banner of his party. Ryan could have resigned in protest as chair of the convention and vowed to resolutely resist Trump’s agenda should he be elected. He might have even convened his own weeklong seminar on core Republican principles to run in Ripon, the birthplace of his party, during what will almost certainly be a disastrous if not violent convention in Cleveland.
Sure, that would have angered part of the Republican base, but it also would have established Ryan as a historically important national figure, a man of steadfast principle and courage. It might even have gotten him elected president some day, and it certainly would have helped him enter the heaven that this observant Catholic believes in.
The blithering idiot Sarah Palin said that Ryan, when he hesitated to endorse Trump after he had locked up the nomination, had “just ended his political career.” He hadn’t then. He has now.
