The bland official statement issued today following the meeting on ‘neutral’ territory between Trump, Ryan and Priebus, was most likely intended to provide Ryan with a face-saving retreat. Those of us who support Trump because he has never been a member of the double-talking Republican hierarchy, will be disappointed that he stooped to meet with Ryan. It would have been better if he had left Ryan dangling and continued with campaigning across the Nation and meeting the American workers who are looking to him to lead the Nation back to sanity and greatness.
Does anyone remember Paul Ryan, as Romney’s VP pick, sitting down before the TV cameras in 2012 to debate Joe Biden? Republican scribblers were ecstatic when Romney picked Ryan, seen as a young, vibrant number-cruncher with all the facts at his finger-tips. He was expected to bury the ignorant, bumbling Biden with statistics that would reveal the superiority of Conservative economics. Biden walked all over him and didn’t even need the help of the moderator!
Ryan’s success in Wisconsin politics is not to be denied. Elected to the Congress in 1999, he has held his seat in a State that has only recently moved Right. He has however been immersed in Republican politics for all of his life, notably as a free market advocate, and is very much an insider. This, plus his grasp of free market economics, was presumably why Romney picked him as a running mate. It was a poor choice and stemmed from the Republican failure to understand post-Revolutionary politics. Ryan, like Romney, completely lacks charisma, and fails to recognize that the ability to take off the gloves and get in the gutter is a requirement when fighting Revolutionaries who have no scruples, believe the ends justify the means, and have the lying Mainstream Media at their backs.
We can assume that Ryan, like Romney, has found Trump’s brawling style and refusal to bore audiences with detailed financial plans, distasteful and insufficiently intellectual. After his humiliation at the hands of the ignorant Biden, it might have been expected that Ryan would retreat to the Republican working parties where National bankruptcy is monitored and bemoaned. Instead, the ‘Boehner House Speaker crisis’ found Ryan promoted to the position of leader of the Republican Party as a toothless compromise candidate.
It might be argued that he was a sound choice for a Party wishing to avoid anything remotely resembling a confrontation with a Black Revolutionary President who is looking for a showdown with anyone who dares to stand in his way. The promotion from House representative, to VP candidate, to House Speaker, to favorite of the Party bosses as choice to block Trump, seems to have gone to Ryan’s head. Over-estimating his own position and power (Congress counts for nothing in this Obama era!); underestimating Donald Trump; and more importantly, under-estimating the Nationalist wave that is sweeping aside polite number-crunchers, Ryan thought he could with-hold the Party’s recognition of Trump’s victory and extract concessions.
If Trump is as smart as we think he is, he will have realized that Ryan has nothing to bargain with and little to offer. It is probable that Trump is aware that he is the heavy-weight in the ring, and this dancing around Priebus and Ryan is mere window-dressing for a Party leadership that has been left high and dry by the tide.