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Apr 15, 2025
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From 2016
Paul Ryan faces Tea Party forces that he helped unleash
Jennifer Steinhauer
Paul D. Ryan and his self-proclaimed “young guns” in the House Republican leadership traversed the country in 2010 harnessing the energy of the Tea Party movement that would sweep them to power that November. But in failing to confront the most divisive forces of the movement, they may have set their party up for its current crisis.
Some of those insurgent winners from that year would eventually turn on the leaders one by one, setting in motion the downfall of Rep. Eric Cantor — just as Republicans were attempting to cobble together a modest immigration measure — then blocking the ascent of Rep. Kevin McCarthy after they had deposed John A. Boehner as the speaker of the House.
Now the Tea Party’s ultimate creation, Donald J. Trump, may be coming for the last young gun unscathed, Ryan.
“Paul Ryan, I don’t know him well, but I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him,” Trump said as he stormed through Super Tuesday and sealed his front-runner status. “And if I don’t, he’s going to have to pay a big price.”
Weeks before that, Trump blamed Ryan in part for Republicans losing the White House in 2012.
Facing forces he inadvertently helped unleash, Ryan finds himself confronting a potentially agonizing choice — both moral and intellectual — between the values he has spent his career promoting and the man who stands ready to repudiate them.
“If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party,” Ryan said this week, directing rare fire at Trump, though not by name, “there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.”
On Wednesday, Ryan’s office was contacted by Trump’s campaign, but the two men did not speak, said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan. “We expect the speaker to be in touch with all the remaining candidates soon to discuss our efforts to build a bold conservative policy agenda for 2017,” he said.
To Democrats, and some Republicans, Ryan and the Republican leadership have a quandary of their own making. Republican lawmakers and candidates often averted their gaze when questions were raised about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and religion. They tolerated breaches of decorum, such as Rep. Joe Wilson’s cry of “You lie” during a presidential address, and even made light of the man who brought many of those alleged conspiracies to the fore: Trump.
“The party repeatedly made myopic decisions, tolerating the intolerable views of a segment of the party unwilling to accept that problem-solving is complicated,” said Tony Fratto, a Republican consultant who served in the George W. Bush administration. “The short game was winning some midterms. The cost was creating an incoherent and unsustainable coalition.”
Democrats are now seizing on this trajectory, and trying to tie all Republican incumbents, even Ryan, to the legacy.
“Donald Trump is appealing to some of the darkest forces in America,” Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “It’s time for Republicans to stop the Frankenstein they created.”
Many Republicans reject that analysis, especially when it comes to Ryan. His aides answer questions of Obama’s birth and presidential eligibility with a form letter that includes a copy of the president’s birth certificate. “I certainly understand the importance of this issue,” the letter says, “and I hope you find the information useful.”
Instead, they pin Trump’s rise on their own failures to deliver on campaign promises, like the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and the broad shrinking of government. That helped spawn the anger propelling Trump.
“People were not totally upfront in saying as long as President Obama is in the White House, we need to be realistic about our goals,” said Brian Walsh, a former official at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I think that contributed to the anger and disenchantment with leadership.”
While Ryan politely rejected the birth inquiries, others did not.
Asked in 2011 on the NBC program “Meet the Press” about the birth certificate conspiracy, and House members still promoting it, Boehner responded, “It really is not our job to tell the American people what to believe and what to think.” Asked on the same program about such “crazy talk,” Cantor replied, “I don’t think it’s, it’s nice to call anyone crazy, OK?”
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