“If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I’m for none of the above,” Mr. Boehner said. “They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I’m for none of the above. I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee.”
.. “I think my proudest accomplishment is walking out of there the same jackass I was 25 years before,” Mr. Boehner said, according to the Stanford newspaper.
Now that he is out of office, the speaker speaks.
Donald Trump Starts Wisconsin Bid in Ryan’s Hometown
Wisconsin’s middle class, Mr. Trump said, has been hit “very, very hard due to loss of manufacturing jobs,” and he warned that Mr. Cruz’s and Mr. Kasich’s support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement signed this year among a dozen Pacific Rim countries, would make things worse.
.. Mr. Ryan urged Republicans to embrace civility and high-minded policy ideas, rather than the “ugliness” that he said had consumed the 2016 presidential race so far.
Shortly after that speech, Mr. Trump, a self-styled counterpuncher, responded by scheduling his first Wisconsin rally before the primary in Mr. Ryan’s hometown.
Crazy About Money
Leading Republicans support Mr. Cruz, not despite his policy positions, but because of them. They may not like his style, but they agree with his substance.
.. When members of a large bipartisan panel on economic policy, run by the University of Chicago business school, were asked whether a gold standard would be an improvement on current arrangements, not one said yes.
.. And Mr. Cruz’s obsession with gold is one reason to believe that he would do even more economic damage in the White House than Mr. Trump would.
.. As I have pointed out on a number of occasions, Mr. Ryan is fundamentally a con man on his signature issue, fiscal policy. Incidentally, for what it’s worth, Mr. Cruz has been relatively honest by his party’s standards on this issue, openly declaring his intention toraise taxes that hit the poor and the middle class even as he slashes them on the rich.
.. Both men are devotees of Ayn Rand, even if Mr. Ryan now tries to downplay his well-documented Rand fandom.
.. But while his policy ideas are extreme, they reflect the same extremism that pervades the party’s elite.
Profiles in Paralysis
WHEN an old order is in crisis, something distinctive happens to the men who lead it.
A strange paralysis sets in, a curious mix of denial and resignation. W. B. Yeats’ famous line about the best lacking all conviction captures part of this, but only part. What really goes missing isn’t conviction itself but the capacity to act on it — to adapt swiftly, resist effectively, or both. Instead the tendency is to freeze, like mice under a hawk’s shadow, and hope that stillness alone can save you from the talons.
.. He favors optimistic rhetoric about the American promise, paired with warnings about the perils of identity politics and the enervating effects of the welfare state
.. On issue after issue, from trade to immigration to entitlement reform, a Trumpized party would simply bury Ryanism/Kempism under white identity politics, and swing as far from Kemp’s enthusiastic minority outreach as the G.O.P. could get.
.. Trump would not have gotten this far, would not have won so many votes — especially working class votes — if the Kempian vision had delivered fully on its promises, if mass immigration, free trade, deregulation and upper-bracket tax cuts had really been the prescription for all economic ills.
.. Repeatedly Harwood presses him on whether the party needs to change to address the concerns of the blue-collar Republicans who are voting for Trump. And every time, as The Week’s James Pethokoukis pointed out afterward, Ryan simply returns to a 1980s-era message: cut spending, cut taxes, open markets, and all will be well. Asked about the possibility that some voters might see those policies as “taking care of people at the top more than you’re taking care of me,” he responds dismissively: “Bernie Sanders talks about that stuff. That’s not who we are.”