Donald Trump and Paul Ryan are better off without each other
By PHILIP KLEIN • 5/12/16 7:18 PM
Washington has been consumed by speculation over whether House Speaker Paul Ryan will eventually learn to stop worrying and embrace presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
But for all the fanfare generated by their Thursday meeting in D.C., the truth is that Trump and Ryan have more to gain this year by remaining apart than by awkwardly joining forces.
To start, it's difficult to see how much benefit Trump would get from having Ryan offer an endorsement that would clearly come across as half-hearted.
If the 2016 primaries taught the political class anything, it's that endorsements are highly overrated. If they mattered, the GOP race would have come down to Sen. Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, and Hillary Clinton would have dispatched Sen. Bernie Sanders months ago. Trump won the primaries despite the fact that most Republican office holders endorsed opponents, or maybe even partially because of it.
Now that the nomination fight is all but officially wrapped up, Republican voters who firmly oppose Trump to the point that they won't consider voting for him in a general aren't going to change their minds based on Ryan's endorsement. A Ryan endorsement wouldn't make them think more of Trump, it would just make them think less of Ryan.
Republican voters currently on the fence about Trump are likely to make their voting decisions based on their own calculations about whether they can stay home or vote third party — even when threatened by the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
In other words, the extent to which Trump unites the party's voters or doesn't unite them will have nothing to do with Ryan.
On the other hand, creating some distance between himself and Ryan could help Trump.
If Trump is going to win the election this year, it won't be by running a traditional Republican campaign. His hope is to run as an outsider and drive up support among independent voters.
Clinton, as of now, has been running a predictable campaign against Trump. And she is using Ryan's reluctance to endorse him to make the point that Trump is too extreme and risky even for his own party. But that plays right into Trump's hands.
It allows him to argue that unlike her, he isn't beholden to the whims of any special interests or Washington politicians, or blinded by partisanship. Instead, he's interested in doing what's right for the American people. He can tout, for instance, his willingness to buck the Republican orthodoxy on trade, entitlements, the minimum wage, and infrastructure spending.
Once he joins forces with Ryan, he becomes seen more as a cookie-cutter politician who is going to implement the GOP agenda, without the benefit of being able to really make a tangible difference in terms of unifying the party's voters.
For Ryan, the reasons not to endorse Trump are quite numerous. Ryan has always prided himself as being a person who was inspired by figures such as Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp to try to advance a set of ideas and offer serious policy solutions. He's made a number of compromises along the way, but that goal has always been a central part of his message.
Trump, however, has blown up the Reagan-Kemp idea of what the party stands for ideologically and he has demonstrated contempt for policy details. Furthermore, the congenial Ryan, particularly since losing the 2012 election, has made a concerted effort to reach out to communities that don't traditionally support Republicans, which stands in stark contrast to Trump's bombastic tone.
At this point, were Ryan to endorse Trump, he would alienate those who see him as somebody who takes ideas seriously. And he wouldn't win any fans among Trump's supporters, who would still oppose him and just assume he supported Trump because he's weak and has no choice.
Looking further ahead, if Trump loses the election as widely expected and becomes a toxic figure, Ryan will be forever tainted. He will have compromised his ability to advance his life's work for the sake of a candidate who was only the GOP nominee for a few months.
However, if Ryan skips the endorsement, he'd have the ability to play a leading role in the debate over how to rebuild the party from the ashes of Trumpism.
Should Trump surprise the pundits once again and win in November, Ryan's failure to endorse Trump won't ultimately matter. Office holders are frequently forced to work together with people who they didn't support during the elections. Ryan and Trump could collaborate on specific issues on which they both agree. If Trump wants accomplishments, he'd need to go through Ryan's House. If Ryan wants any parts of his agenda to become law, he'd need Trump's signature.
In the meantime, however, Trump and Ryan would have more to lose by joining forces than they could ever hope to gain.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tr...rticle/2591217
