Ryan brought down to size

Look, I’m a policy guy. That was Paul Ryan’s line before last Friday, when the healthcare bill he designed in secret went down without a vote, his own party showing what they thought of his policy.

Time and again when he was asked about President Donald Trump’s attacks on immigrants or the courts, his ties to Russia or his claims of massive election fraud, the speaker of the House of Representatives would say he was too busy working on his agenda, A Better Way, to think about all that nasty stuff.

That Ryan failed on the policy promise Republicans have been running on for eight years makes it clear that if he is the policy wonk of the Republican Party, the party has no policy. And with a healthcare plan that would have stripped 24-million people of basic care and drastically hiked premiums for people over 60, it seems that they don’t much care what people need or want.

The discrepancy between promise and reality should be no surprise to anyone who has looked at Ryan’s proposals over the years. He has been rolling out grand pronouncements, but the main message never changed: the US’s “path to prosperity” (remember that one? 2011) lies in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and slashing social programmes and regulations. Ryan swallowed Trump’s insults and offences, in the name of passing his agenda. After seven years and 60 failed Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, Ryan got his moment and blew it.

After pulling the bill, he showed he hadn’t given up on trying to make people think he was someone they could believe in. With no detectable irony, he described his humiliating defeat as “an incredible opportunity,” adding, “there remains so much that we can do to help improve people’s lives, and we will”. But he’s fooling no one any longer. Put to the test, Ryan revealed he doesn’t have anything more creative in his cranium than stale conservative dogma. New York, March 27.