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Friday, June 17, 2016

'I Would Sue any President Who Exceeded His or Her Powers'

Yes, those are the words of Paul Ryan, the Republican House Majority leader and they are regarding the Republican party's Presidential nominee. Ouch.

Should this reassure us that maybe Trump is not an existential threat the the Republic?

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/06/hillary-2016-vote-for-survivable-event.html

Vote for Donald Trump: he's not an existential threat to the Republic, as long as I'm successful in my lawsuit against him.

Ryan warns that Trump does not have a 'blank check."

"House Speaker Paul Ryan has limits to what he’ll accept from presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump — it’s just that, apparently, Trump hasn’t crossed that line yet."

"In a sit-down interview in his ceremonial Capitol Hill office on Thursday, Ryan told The Huffington Post that Trump does not have “a blank check” with his endorsement. “I don’t know what that line is,” Ryan said, “but right now, I want to make sure that we win the White House.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-donald-trump-blank-check-endorsement_us_5762fc28e4b0df4d586f997

If Hitler won the GOP nomination tomorrow would you support him if you thought he could win?

Because Trump is the next best thing, as close as you will get in America today.

"Ryan originally withheld his endorsement of Trump in early May, citing a desire to have “real unity,” not “fake unity,” with the likely GOP nominee. Four weeks later, Ryan endorsed."

"But the speaker doesn’t seem to think he and Trump have found authentic harmony. “It’s something that has to be worked at,” Ryan said, “and we still got work to do.”

What would real unity look like?

Understandable and granted that Ryan wants to win the White House. But here's anther way to look at it: does he want to ever win the White House again?

Associating too close with Donald Trump could harm that desire. It could also be very harmful to your longterm political health. Both for your party and yourself.

Jennifer Rubin wrote an open letter to Paul Ryan today. She's not happy with him shirking what she sees as his responsibility here:

"Beyond that, however, you seem reluctant to make the sort of decision expected of leaders, ones for whom principle overrides partisanship. You say, “I feel as a responsibility institutionally as the speaker of the House that I should not be leading some chasm in the middle of our party.” But you are leading — you have chosen to support Trump. The chasm exists; the only question is on which side men of good conscience will put themselves. The notion that you can avoid a chasm is wrong; the notion that it is not your responsibility to align against Trump is wrong as well."

"You say you fear a chasm will knock the Republicans out of the White House. Honestly, given the past few weeks and the polling (which surely will get worse for Trump), do you imagine there is a significant chance Trump would win the White House? Surely the certain way to “knock [Republicans] out of the White House” is to stick with the only candidate who could lose to Hillary Clinton. The only way to preserve Republicans’ hopes is for the convention to find an acceptable, fit nominee."

"At a more fundamental level, it has become increasingly impossible to argue that Trump is “better” than Clinton. Both are a nightmare, wouldn’t you say? The idea that Congress can guide, cajole and check Trump was a nice fiction that has been shown to be entirely unrealistic. He has not adopted policy positions or the values of the party; to the contrary, he is determined to ignore sage advice and defy principles of limited government. Practically every day you are forced to repudiate a position or viewpoint he espouses. Once he is president, do you think he would be more inclined to pay attention to you?"

"More to the point, the choice does not need to be Trump vs. Clinton. A growing segment of the party, guided by conscience and political realism, cannot accept the unacceptable. You should stand with them, not with Trump. You should, as you did when you took the job of speaker, think beyond convention (no pun intended), rewrite expectations and seize the moment."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/06/17/an-open-letter-to-paul-ryan/

Nonetheless I see her becoming a little unrealistic herself. She thinks that the GOP should get a new nominee. I think doing this at this late stage is pretty impossible both logistically and politically.

There are millions of Republicans who voted for him.

Besides this, I don't think any of the future viable 2020 nominees-Ryan himself, Rubio, Cruz, Scott Walker-are going to want to be the sacrificial lamb here.

Beyond this, I think she is a little overconfident that any other candidate could beat Hillary Clinton.

This is what the Bernie Sanders folks thought as well. Everyone says she's easy to beat until they try.

I don't think that's true of Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush-he has an awful lot of baggage with his brother.

And surely this primary showed the weakness of Marco Rubio.

As big a joke as Donald Trump is, the party that nominated him is the even bigger joke.


1 comment:

  1. I hope Trump takes these latest attempts to deny him the nomination very **VERY** personally, and files about 50,000 new law suits, and whips his supporters into a frenzy of hate against the Republicans involved with this mutiny. And I hope they pay a terrible terrible price for their disloyalty to Trump. =)

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