House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared to take a principled stand when he distanced himself from Donald Trump. But he has infuriated Mr. Trump and his supporters, and that could hurt other GOP candidates.
WASHINGTON — When House Speaker Paul Ryan told fellow House Republicans that he would no longer campaign with or defend GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, he may have felt it was the obvious, principled position to take.
Speaker Ryan is a straight-shooting family man and devout Roman Catholic, and after the release of a lewd 2005 video showing Mr. Trump bragging about sexually aggressive treatment of women, Ryan said he was “disgusted.”
Ryan’s goal in distancing himself from Trump, he told House GOP lawmakers on a conference call Monday, was to focus on saving the GOP majority in the House, potentially imperiled by Trump’s decline in polls. But Ryan’s new posture may already have backfired. Some fellow GOP House members are furious. And national party chairman Reince Priebus pointedly has not abandoned Trump, pledging to keep spending party money on the nominee’s campaign.
Ryan appears only to have empowered Trump. The voluble billionaire, after all, clawed his way to the nomination by bucking the party establishment – and Ryan, as speaker, is as establishment as it gets. Now Trump boasts of feeling liberated.
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