| | | | What Paul Ryan tried (and failed) to do for the GOP |  | | House Speaker Paul Ryan delivered his farewell address to Congress on Wednesday, a predictable paean to the "wonders and opportunity" that serving in elected office afforded.
Which raised the obvious question: If this place is SO great, why are you leaving?
And this, less obvious answer: Because Ryan spent the last three years trying -- and failing -- to preserve some semblance of a Republican Party that stood distinct from President Donald Trump and that would survive and thrive when Trump was gone.
Think back to the fall of 2016. The "Access Hollywood" tape has emerged. Ryan, in triage mode, told his House colleagues that he would no longer "defend Donald Trump. Not now. Not in the future." It was seen as a last-ditch attempt to save what was presumed to be a sinking Republican ship with Trump as its weighty anchor.
Then Trump won. And Ryan saw an opportunity. Trump had no real policy agenda to speak of, he believed in himself and his "gut" but little else. Ryan, who had policy proposals up the wazoo, would simply graft his views onto Trump's agenda; he would be the policy machine of the presidency.
To accomplish that strategy, Ryan largely avoided significant public criticism of Trump. Yes, when Trump said something particularly egregious, Ryan would tut-tut. After Trump attacked cable TV anchor Mika Brzezinski for alleging "bleeding badly from a face-lift," Ryan offered a measured amount of opprobrium; "Obviously, I don't see that as an appropriate comment," he offered.
But generally speaking, Ryan avoided the sort of public distancing from Trump that people like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker pursued. It was all under the theory that to get what Ryan wanted -- a tax cut being the key item -- he had to play nice with Trump at all costs. And that if he could make Trump enact the Ryan agenda, then there would be a policy backbone to conservative Republicanism that would survive Trumpism -- no matter what the President said or did over his time in the White House.
That Faustian bargain, however, failed -- as they so often do. In coddling Trump to get what he wanted, Ryan wound up effectively capitulating total and complete control over the idea of what it means to be a Republican to a man who, prior to running for president in 2016, had only the loosest affiliation with the GOP.
Consider what the Republican Party of 2014 -- the Republican Party for Ryan and his 2012 presidential running mate Mitt Romney -- stood for: shrinking the national debt by reining in out-of-control entitlement spending, a hawkish foreign policy based on the idea that the United States.needed to lead in the world and a commitment to protecting the family unit -- and its moral structure -- at all costs.
Now, think about where the party sits: With a President actively uninterested in deficits and debt (Trump wants $5 billion for a border wall!!!), who has pushed an isolationist foreign policy and who makes no secret of his disdain for the idea of the presidency as a position of moral leadership.
Ryan's fundamental mistake was the belief that he could orbit around the black hole that is Trump and never be swallowed by it. That he could manage Trump for his own means. That he could take lemons and make lemonade.
He leaves, like so many establishment Republicans before him, defeated at the feet of Trump. Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican Party has been made complete in the last two years. And that takeover came directly at the expense of the likes of Ryan, and the others who ran things before Trump arrived on the scene.
The Point: Ryan walks away from Congress and a Republican Party that he barely recognizes -- even from what it looked like four years ago. That is a defeat for a man who many saw as one of the next great leaders of the Republican movement. A big one.
-- Chris | | "I'm not giving you a deadline. But I do like your socks and your tie. That's really nice. But that's not a diversion at all."
-- Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who is reportedly mulling a 2020 run, giving the most memorable thinking-about-it-esque quote yet this cycle. | | | What's one thing a Kardashian, a Kushner and Congress have in common?
All three came together to successfully push new criminal justice reform measures through the Senate, according to a new tick-tock from Jeremy Diamond and Alex Rogers.
Next, the House will vote on the Senate version of the bill, which shouldn't be a heavy lift -- it has already passed a similar version earlier this year. President Trump has indicated he plans to sign it into law. | | | Sir Paul doing "Wonderful Christmastime." (This video is AMAZING.) | | The South Carolina Republican Party is considering not even holding a party primary in 2020 to tamp down on potential challengers to Donald Trump.
The decision isn't final, and while it sounds extreme, it's not unprecedented.
The South Carolina GOP didn't issue a primary ballot in 2004 when George W. Bush was running for re-election for the same reasons. And in 1992, the Republican Party of Iowa didn't issue a primary ballot to protect George H.W. Bush from the primary challenge coming from Pat Buchanan. | |
TBT TO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CUT THE LINE | | California has leapfrogged the presidential primary in an effort to raise the state's profile in the nomination process -- a big change to the 2020 presidential election in ways we don't fully understand yet, Lauren writes.
California may have cut the line (their new primary now falls on Super Tuesday rather than in early June) but what's stopping any other state from scooting their primary up before Iowa or New Hampshire, the traditional first-in-the-nation voting states?
Precedent -- and the failures of the states that tried it before, like Florida and Michigan in 2008 -- have stopped other states from trying the same move.
Furor over Florida and Michigan's rogue January primaries resulted in both states getting only half their allocated delegates by both the DNC and the RNC at the party conventions in summer 2008. The subsequent backlash pushed Florida and Michigan to fall back in line -- and move their primaries back. | |
CHRI$TMA$ CA$H CHRONICLE$ | | Are Democrats spending less 💸 on Christmas because of Trump?
A new poll shows Republicans are spending more money this year on Christmas presents than Democrats.
As CNN polling pro Grace Sparks writes: "Only 5% of Democrats say they're spending more than previous years, as opposed to 19% of Republicans in the poll. That's a reversal from the Obama years when Democrats reported spending more money on Christmas presents and Republicans said they were spending less." | | | | | | |
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