Albert Hunt: Damage control may rule GOP convention

When House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., released a video laying out his familiar theme that politics should be fought on ideas and issues, the Drudge Report’s headline was: “Paul Ryan launches his first campaign ad.”

A dream of some Republicans is that Ryan will rescue them from a looming fiasco in the presidential election. Ryan rejected that dream this week, saying he doesn’t want and would not accept the nomination.

It would be rational to turn to Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Ryan, who might win the election, but neither the season nor the Republican grassroots reward rationality.

If Donald Trump goes into the Republican convention with close to the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination, it would be hard to deny him. It’s more likely that he’ll come in about 100 votes shy.

That’s why in the days leading up to the Cleveland gathering, all eyes will be on the rules and credentials committees, most of whose members haven’t yet been chosen by state delegations. These panels can come up with procedures to thwart Trump.

The temptation to do so will be great, despite the havoc he could wreak. Polls show that he’s the most unpopular political figure in modern times – and that he would splinter the party.

The substantive schisms are deep. Trump’s recent foreign policy pronouncements were derided by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as a “complete disaster.” His pledge to force Mexico to pay for a wall along the southern border by withholding all remittances to that country is legally dubious, experts say, and would be an enormous expansion of executive power even as the party and Trump himself accuse President Obama of illicitly overreaching his office’s authority.

On economics, Trump breaks with much Republican orthodoxy, except for his support for huge tax cuts for the wealthy.

With the possibility of a disruptive end, Republicans are pondering how to protect incumbents at the congressional and state levels. Some even argue that the best result might be to nominate someone else with Trump running as a third-party candidate, calculating that the votes he brought in would support Republicans in down-ballot contests.

That someone else would probably be Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who’ll come to Cleveland as the runner-up. Smart and tough, the self-proclaimed right-winger would draw a sharp ideological divide with Hillary Clinton.

Yet as the freshman lawmaker gets more scrutiny, his electoral liabilities might rival Trump’s. He advocates a huge tax cut, but it would include a value-added or national sales tax, which isn’t politically popular. He opposes all abortions without an exception for rape, and wants to roll back gay marriage rights.

Look at a recent segment by the television satirist Samantha Bee that highlighted the wacky comments of prominent right-wing pastors who back Cruz.

But unlike Trump, he’s a lifelong Republican, and while he might lose, like Barry Goldwater in 1964, the recovery might be easier.

Even as Republicans openly discuss damage control, some wistfully recall last April: They had their strongest field since 1980, the deepest bench, a favorable historical cycle against a mediocre Democratic field. That seems a lot longer than a year ago.

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 7:01 PM with the headline "Albert Hunt: Damage control may rule GOP convention."