Keep talking, Paul (Ryan). The more you stick your crooked nose out in public, the better the chances that a MAGA-supporting conservative will win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination next year.
Don’t tell him, but by continuing to speak out more than four years after he officially left Washington – or was drummed out of town -- Paul Ryan is only furthering the conservative causes he portends to oppose. Ryan doesn’t see it, but he’s actually campaigning for Donald Trump to win the 2024 Republican nomination for president. How could that be, you ask? It’s mostly because Ryan has supplanted the Bush family and even Mitt Romney as the face of the old and discredited – and largely comatose – Republican establishment.
The dinosaurs are leaving the scene, and except for Mitch McConnell, there isn’t a greater exemplar of the big government war mongering clique than doofus Paul from cheese country. One can always assess a Republican’s value by how many Democrats love them – and by that measure, Paul Ryan ain’t worth much.
Think about it – is there another Republican who regularly receives face time on establishment media programs to elaborate on how much he despises Donald Trump and spread false venom about how “Trump can’t win” (because the former president turned off too many people with his uncanny and distinctive persona)? Maybe Liz Cheney fits the description, but slapping a blonde wig and adding glasses to Ryan’s boyish mug would make them virtually indistinguishable.
There’s no secret why Ryan is still around – those who hate Trump keep Mitt Romney’s running mate in the forefront because he allegedly represents millions of NeverTrumpers. They’re the spineless war mongering, federal power loving losers who aren’t put off by the real evil enemy, the Democrats. The eternally disgruntled establishmentarians can’t stomach the memory of someone from outside the system challenging them, and winning.
Ryan’s appearance on CBS last week drew the attention of conservatives, not only for the former speaker’s open antipathy to Trump, but also because Paul is so clearly out-of-touch with today’s conservative/populist voters that he reeks of dust and mold. Ryan’s mindset is so attenuated from current thought that he probably spends the majority of his time holed up in an attic somewhere.
But in a way, Ryan is still quite useful to the MAGA mission. In a telling piece titled, “Paul Ryan’s Attack on Trump Proves He’s Played Out”, the matchless Scott McKay wrote at The American Spectator recently:
“[T]he secret of Trump’s success can be boiled down to the fact that he’s the first Republican politician since Reagan actually willing to give his own voters what they’re asking for. And Republican voters don’t really ask for all that much. It really ought not be so hard to satisfy us, despite the persistent difficulties the ‘inclusive, aspirational’ politicians have in doing so.
“One of the most basic and fervent asks is that the party actually stand up to the cultural degradation of the Left, particularly as it has metastasized into outright child molestation and wholesale vulgarity…
“Conservatives have never, ever been on offense in the culture war. We’ve been on defense since people started reading Antonio Gramsci and acting on his rantings about the need to destroy Christianity, charity, and nationalism to bring about the Marxist revolution almost nobody wants. And Paul Ryan says he’s ‘not a culture war guy.’ What a weak, feckless, useless, worthless waste he made of his political career and … whatever this is that has followed.”
I could hardly put it any better. McKay sums Ryan up perfectly, but the Louisiana-based American Spectator writer almost always has his finger on the pulse of the conservative movement. The culture war has existed for a long, long time (way before Pat Buchanan’s famous “Culture War” speech at the 1992 Republican convention), but it’s never been hotter and more intense than it is in 2023. In his piece, McKay pointed to the Joe Biden White House’s recent “Pride Month” celebration where every freak or deviant known to mankind was on hand to listen to the Democrat president and his wife revel in satanic debauchery.
McKay also alluded to Ryan’s plea to have the Republican party return to its days of primarily focusing on economics and tax cuts and regulation slashing as well as being the home of the all-war-all-the-time neoconservative wing embodied by the Bush presidents, Mitt Romney and John McCain. It’s almost as though the still boyish Paul seeks to rewind the tape to before 2016, back when it was safe for his ideological brethren to talk about Russia as being America’s greatest threat.
But today’s voters don’t agree. Paul, you may not care to engage the culture war, but the culture war will engage you.
A major theater in that war is located on the southern border, where the Washington Uniparty works overtime to ignore and even disguise the ruling class’s mission to bring in all the cheap labor that the corporate/big business world can exploit. As a group, the pro-open borders elites swear that those who are opposed to mass illegal immigration are simply bigoted and backwards, never mind the plague of fentanyl and tragedy of human trafficking being carried out by the Mexican cartels. A friend who’s seen the front lines at the border suggests the cartels aren’t even as dialed in on the drug trade as they once were, since they make more money off of smuggling living, breathing, cargo into the United States now.
Trump broke into politics eight years ago and from the outset he homed in on the “populist” issues that real voters are concerned about the most. The average conservative person in the hinterlands cares about government spending too much and running up enormous debt, but economics isn’t what drives his or her passion. It’s the utter destruction of American traditions and culture that’s moving millions to reject the horrid direction of the nation under senile Joe Biden, the Democrat congressional leadership and liberal governors like California’s Gavin Newsom.
Simply put, if the 2024 Republican nominee dwells on tax rates and government red tape alone, as Ryan appears to be advocating for, he (or she) will lose to Biden. It’s arguable that culture is the main area where Ron DeSantis clearly leads Donald Trump, with the Florida governor’s full-on approach to waging the culture war setting him apart.
Frankly, the White House “Pride Month” celebration was an in-your-face affront to “normal” Americans who just want their kids to be educated in the basics, their daughters to have an opportunity to play high school sports without boys pretending to be girls possessing an unfair advantage and to live free from the influences of the evil LGBTQIA+++ agenda without it being forced down their throats.
Why doesn’t the establishment media ever ask Ryan about what he thought of “Pride Month”? Wouldn’t it have been a great chance to test the Catholic former Speaker’s views on the recent hubbub over the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” being honored by Major League Baseball?
(Note: The Dodgers’ “Pride Night” with the Sisters last Friday night was a major dud and drew thousands in protest. Who says there’s no war going on?)
Culture isn’t the only thing, but it’s a big part of what conservative voters worry about these days. I got an email last week from a regular reader who’s watching what’s going on in the country and summed it up well: “The Direction that the USA is going with outrageous Government Spending, encouraging all the bad things, Open Borders, Crime, Not developing and using Energy resources, Providing Housing, Education, Healthcare and a total livelihood to people who don’t want to help themselves, Promoting Racism, pitting people against others, Educating children to hate the Country and not respect their parents, a whole set of new beliefs, transpeople, promiscuity, tolerance, and no punishment for crime, inviting and encouraging shoplifting, destroying people who want to make America Great, or even Improved, Wasting Taxpayer’s money on Worldly causes like UNESCO, The Paris Climate Accord, World Health Organization, etc. -- are destroying the USA.”
Well put. But there’s also another type of “war” that Paul Ryan is protecting through his rabid anti-Trump/MAGA stance – the Russia/Ukraine war. The establishment surmises that if Trump wins the election, he will vastly reduce or eliminate the United States’ aid to Ukraine, all but forcing the Ukrainian authorities to sue for peace. Without American support, the Ukrainians couldn’t hope to mount a campaign that would recapture territory from the Russian invaders.
With Trump at the helm, Russia and Ukraine would have to talk it out. No more blank checks for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the corrupt Ukrainian government, the “leaders” who are arguably almost as bad as Vladimir Putin in terms of squelching free speech and religion.
Tucker Carlson, on his Twitter channel, had the issue pegged last week in discussing why the establishment (including Paul Ryan) hates Trump so much. With all of this, Trump is clearly running to the center on culture and social issues because he probably thinks it’s the key to forming a winning electoral coalition in 2024. The same white suburbanites who used to make up the core of the GOP have drifted into the Democrats’ camp in recent times, and the former president seems to buy-in to the commentariat’s arguments that social and cultural issues are toxic to these folks.
I believe it would be a mistake for Trump to move left from where he was during the 2016 campaign and his presidency to woo the educated, government grant dependent intellectual class back to the GOP at the expense of his populist supporters. Folks who follow politics recognize where the truth lies, and it doesn’t reside with Paul Ryan and the Republican establishment.
Wars (culture and otherwise) could determine the fate of the republic. Trump and all Republicans had best acknowledge it before it’s too late.
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