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| Paul Ryan. |
Paul
Ryan, speaker of the house, charged GOP candidates to stop campaigning on the
politics of fear and divisiveness. In a speech that is out to annihilate the
core of Trump’s message, Speaker Ryan warned that the presidential race is
tearing America apart.
The
30-minute speech billed as the “State of American politics” given in a
flag-draped Ways and Means Committee room in the Longworth House Office
Building, is heart-felt, arguably inspiring, but undeniably tinged with
self-recrimination and remorse. It may prove to be very decisive in a political
season where people who subscribe to Trumpism think it is wrong to admit or
apologize for where you went wrong.
Clearly,
Speaker Ryan’s attempt to inject some civility and rationality back in the race
is a political intervention no one should sneer at who is serious about
repairing the political system that is broken down.
“We
shouldn’t accept ugliness as the norm,” the Wisconsin Republican said. “It did
not used to be this bad and it does not have to be this way.” He spoke to an
audience mostly made up of congressional interns, saying, “Instead of playing
to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the
identity politics of our base versus their base, we unite people around ideas
and principles. And instead of being timid, we go bold. We don’t just resort to
scaring you, we dare to inspire you.”
This
is challenging and unsparing for a message targeted at Republican politicians
running for the White House in a campaign marked by profanity and unrelenting
bully tactics.
He
continued, “We are slipping into being a divisive country. We are speaking to
each other in echo chambers where we only talk to people who agree with us and
we think there is something wrong with people who don’t agree with us. We
question and impugn motives instead of test the original thesis.”
Ryan
owned up to not always taking his own advice. Candidly, he recalled how he once
termed American society as a place made up of “makers” and “takers” with
reference to the divide between those who subside on government assistance and
those who create jobs.
“As
I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I
realized I was wrong,” Speaker Ryan said. “ ‘Takers’ wasn’t how to refer to a
single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family.
Most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans
that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a
point.”
For
denouncing the political environment while sparing the person they think
created it, top-ranking Democrats on Capitol Hill were not prepared to give
Ryan’s speech an easy pass.
“Speaker
Ryan is speechifying on the deck of the Titanic, running a do-nothing Congress
while supporting Donald Trump, a racist demagogue, for president. Speaker
Ryan’s words will ring hollow until he backs them up with action and withdraws
his support from Donald Trump,” Adam Jentleson, spokesman for Senate minority
leader, Harry Reid, said in a written statement.
At
this stage, frankly speaking, denouncing Mr. Trump and withdrawing support for
his controversial candidacy should not be such a hard thing for Speaker Ryan to
do. Mitt Romney is resolute in his fight to prevent Donald Trump from getting
the Republican nomination, and has thrown his considerable weight behind Ted
Cruz. Jeb Bush has denounced Trump without reservation, and endorsed Ted Cruz.
Despite
his threat that his not getting the nomination would provoke unimaginable riots
– this is a strange first, for me, where an American presidential candidate
would actually promote violence, like a despot or warlord in a Third world
country – the sky is cloudy and ominous for The Donald.
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