"Expecting a Trump Defeat-Ryan planned a speech on Election Night to DENOUNCE Trump..." [View all]

[kpete]

“expecting a Trump defeat, Ryan planned a speech on Election Night to denounce Trump’s racially polarizing agenda as a betrayal of conservatism’s ideals. Instead, Ryan folded the speech back into his jacket pocket—where it has receded deeper ever since.”

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No one in the GOP was better equipped, by position and disposition alike, to resist Trump’s racially infused, insular nationalism, or to define a more inclusive competing vision for the party. Instead, Ryan chose to tolerate both Trump’s personal excesses and his racially polarizing words and deeds as the price worth paying to advance Ryan’s own top priorities: cutting spending; regulations; and above all, taxes. The result was that Ryan, more than any other prominent Republican, personified the devil’s bargain the GOP has signed with Trump. And his departure crystallizes the difficult choices Republicans face as Trump redefines the party in his belligerent image.


From the exhaustive reporting of Politico’s Tim Alberta, who was first to telegraph that Ryan was likely to retire, we know that the speaker, expecting a Trump defeat, planned to deliver a speech on Election Night in 2016. He intended to denounce Trump’s racially polarizing agenda as a political dead end and a betrayal of conservatism’s ideals. Instead, when Trump won, Ryan folded the speech back into his jacket pocket—where it has receded deeper ever since.

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more:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/paul-ryan-personifies-the-devils-bargain-the-gop-struck-with-trump/557783/

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