Paul Ryan had no good options on Trump

Both parties seem intent on throwing the election away.

The Democrats, running against a man with highest-ever negatives, are poised to nominate a candidate with the second-highest-ever negatives. Hillary Clinton started with every possible advantage yet could not put away until this week an obscure, fringy, socialist backbencher in a country uniquely allergic to socialism.

Clinton’s Tuesday victory speech was a pudding without a theme for a campaign without a cause. After 14 months, she still can’t get past the famous question asked of Ted Kennedy in 1979: Why do you want to be president?

So whom do the Republicans put up? They had 17 candidates. Any of a dozen could have taken down the near-fatally weak Clinton.

Instead, they nominate Donald Trump – conspiracy theorist (from Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth to Ted Cruz’s father’s involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald), fabulist (from his own invented opposition to the Iraq War and the Libya intervention to the “thousands and thousands” of New Jersey Muslims celebrating Sept. 11), admirer of strongmen (from Vladimir Putin to the butchers of Tiananmen).

His outrageous provocations have been brilliantly sequenced so that the shock of the new extinguishes the memory of the last. Though perhaps not his most recent – his gratuitous attack on a “Mexican” federal judge (born and bred in Indiana) for inherent bias because of his ethnicity. Textbook racism, averred House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Even Trump acolyte and possible running mate Newt Gingrich called it inexcusable.

Trump promptly doubled down, expanding the universe of the not-to-be-trusted among us by adding American Muslims to the list of those who might be inherently biased.

Yet Trump is the party’s chosen. He won the primary contest fair and square. The people have spoken. What to do?

First, dare to say that the people aren’t always right. Surely Republicans admit the possibility. Or do they believe the people chose rightly in electing Obama? The people’s will deserves respect, not necessarily affirmation.

I sympathize with the dilemma of Republican leaders reluctant to affirm. Many are as appalled as I am by Trump, but they don’t have the freedom I do to say, as I have publicly, that I cannot imagine ever voting for him. They have unique party and institutional responsibilities.

Which brings us to the matter of Paul Ryan, now being excoriated by many conservatives for having said he would vote for Trump.

But what was he to do? Oppose and resign? And then what? If he created a permanent split in the party, he’d be setting up the GOP’s entire conservative wing as scapegoat if Trump loses in November.

Ryan had no good options. He chose the one he felt was least damaging to the conservative cause.

I wouldn’t have done it, but I’m not House speaker. He is a practicing politician who has to calculate the consequences of what he does. That deserves at least some understanding.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Paul Ryan had no good options on Trump."