Having suffered the political equivalent of a blown tire while driving along an icy mountain road on Friday night, GOP nominee Donald J. Trump stabilized a seemingly fatal situation by Sunday evening. Through his commanding, issue-driven performance against Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate, Trump steered his vehicle into a turnout. He replaced the flat with a new steel-belted radial and readied himself to return to the challenging road ahead.
But on Monday morning, House speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) raced in, slashed Trump’s tire anew, and nudged him toward the closest cliff.
Ryan could have left things alone, with Trump’s Access Hollywood tape receding in the rear-view mirror. Instead, Ryan donned his peacock feathers for an especially flamboyant display of moral preening.
Ryan erased the gap that Trump had placed between his candidacy and this controversy. Rather than let it be, Ryan dragged this whole episode back into the middle of the road.
During a conference call with GOP House members on Monday, Ryan reportedly announced that he neither would defend Trump nor campaign with him between now and Election Day. Naturally, pro-Clinton journalists (forgive the redundancy) fanned this hot coal into a forest fire.
Ryan could maintain his perch atop the moral high ground and do so quietly. He simply could go about his business and avoid Trump’s events. He could respond to journalists’ questions about the GOP nominee with bromides such as “I wish Donald Trump well and look forward to winning a larger House Republican majority on the night he wins the White House.”
This would have maintained peace on the right.
Instead, the day after Trump’s solid debate effort became the new narrative, Ryan needlessly fathered the unprecedented phenomenon of a Republican standard-bearer and a Republican speaker in open warfare with each other — just four weeks before a general election.
More than merely foolish politics, this episode exposes the reputedly level-headed Ryan as truly, deeply morally warped.
Everyone agrees that Trump’s comments about women (including references to female genitalia) were disappointing and inappropriate. Trump apologized for them twice before the latest debate and did so again at Sunday’s face-off against Clinton.
“This was locker-room talk,” Trump told a town hall in St. Louis. “I am not proud of it. I apologized to my family. I apologized to the American people. . . . I am very embarrassed by it, and I hate it, but it’s locker-room talk.”
(Remember: Trump’s words from 2005 are at issue here, not his actions. Conversely, Bill Clinton’s actual behavior somehow is no big deal. Journalists, feminists, and Democrats seem utterly uninterested in his sexual shenanigans with Monica Lewinsky, his widely acknowledged sexual harassment of Paula Jones, his alleged sexual assault of Kathleen Willey, and even a very credible accusation of rape by Juanita Broaddrick.)