Ryan swept away in Trump revolution

WASHINGTON» As he announced his exit from public life, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan tried hard to show appreciation for the man who took the Republican Party from his grasp and transformed it into something else.

“I’m grateful to the president,” Ryan, R-Wis., said four times in two minutes, with slight grammatical variations, in a news conference Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol, noting that Donald Trump’s 2016 victory gave Republicans the power to cut taxes and

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increase military spending.

But the praise did little to remove the shadow Trump casts over the end of Ryan’s career now that he has decided to forgo a campaign for re-election. The Trumpian revolution, which Ryan had long resisted, appeared to have claimed another victory, dispatching another occasional critic and reaffirming the president’s growing hold on a shrinking electoral coalition.

“Ryan is an embodiment of a particular kind of optimistic, pro-growth, pro-free market inclusive conservatism,” said Michael Steele, a former top adviser to House Speaker John Boehner, ROhio. “And that is a very different feel and tone of where the party is going under President Trump.”

Ryan’s decision to throw in the towel abruptly, just six months before the midterms, is likely to further Trump’s control of the party. Republicans strategists worry that it will make it harder for the GOP to hold onto the House, a prospect that seems less likely after a recent Democratic victory in a special election outside of Pittsburgh.

Not only are donors making clear they are more skeptical of the effort to retain the House, but the sudden departure of Ryan suggests the Republican ideological tent will continue to shrink. Including Ryan and Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who also announced his retirement Wednesday, 46 Republicans have retired or said they will not run for reelection, and those ranks are likely to grow further in the coming weeks.

A former vice presidential nominee, the highestranking Republican during Trump’s rise and once his party’s ideological standard-bearer, Ryan has spent the past two years resisting, minimizing and ultimately conceding to a Trumpian revolution he could neither contain nor control.

Ryan’s brand of politics, an uplifting fiscal conservatism rooted in his admiration of his former boss, Jack Kemp, seemed ascendant as recently as 2012, when Mitt Romney chose to add him to the presidential ticket. Four years later, as Trump was gaining popularity, Ryan warned the country of the divisive tactics the president continues to employ.

“Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of ‘our base’ and ‘their base,’ we unite people around ideas and principles,” Ryan said in a March 2016 speech on the state of American politics. “We don’t resort to scaring you, we dare to inspire you.”

But Trump still won, not just the nomination but the White House, with a campaign that cast immigrants as inherently devious snakes and encouraged public displays of anger at protesters and the press.

The protests Ryan offered rarely had an impact. He denounced Trump’s comments about a federal judge as “racist,” condemned Trump’s approach to trade, defended immigration as “a thing to celebrate,” and continued to fight for reductions in entitlement spending long after Trump promised no cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

But through it all, Trump’s power in the party continued to grow. National polls now show Trump enjoys dominant approval ratings among Republicans, with 86 percent of party voters supporting the president in the latest Quinnipiac Poll, a dramatic increase from 2016.

“Republicans have united around him and his agenda at least up to this point,” said Whit Ayers, a Republican pollster. “If you look at positions that Republicans as a whole have taken in the Trump era, positions they held as recently as two years ago no longer hold the same popularity.”

Polls have shown increasing Republican support for expanding Social Security, a position closer to Trump than Ryan, as well as declining Republican support for free trade agreements, which were once a cornerstone of conservative economic thinking.

At the same time, Ryan has struggled to hold together a the GOP caucus, failing to pass a repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Ryan’s approval among Republican voters now hovers around seven in 10, and his overall approval rating is below that of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in some polls.