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August 02, 2016 02:53 PM UTC

BREAKING: Trump Won't Back Paul Ryan, John McCain

  • 55 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
The general state of the Republican Party at the moment.
The general state of the Republican Party at the moment.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate and VP choice, said today that he “strongly” supports House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Is it still possible for Trump to pick a different running mate?

—–

As the Washington Post reports:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is refusing to back House Speaker Paul D. Ryan in his upcoming primary election, saying in an interview Tuesday that he is “not quite there yet” in endorsing his party’s top-ranking elected official.

Trump also said he was not supporting Sen. John McCain in his primary in Arizona, and he singled out Sen. Kelly Ayotte as a weak and disloyal leader in New Hampshire, a state whose presidential primary Trump won handily.

With Ryan’s Wisconsin primary scheduled for next Tuesday, Trump praised the House speaker’s underdog opponent, Paul Nehlen, for running “a very good campaign.” Trump said that Ryan has sought his endorsement, but that as of now he is only “giving it very serious consideration.”

Burn, baby, burn.

Comments

55 thoughts on “BREAKING: Trump Won’t Back Paul Ryan, John McCain

  1. Well now what does Ryan have to lose by denouncing and un-endorsing Trump? He's probably untouchable in his district with or without Trump's backing. His district went for Cruz and Ryan is firmly in place there.

    Will other R candidates be more afraid of the wrath of Trump or will they realize that Trump can't afford to refuse to support all of them and can't win without anyone's support? Should they completely disassociate with him and hope that, once completely severed from him, they can do well while Trump goes down to an epic defeat? Better luck with the whole WH thing in 2020? 

    1. The fact that Trump makes it so obviously personal, as well as vindictive, just reinforces Obama's (and many other's) judgment that Trump is temperamentally unfit to be President.

      Trump's base of support will begin to shrivel rapidly at this point.

      Which makes me wonder when Moddy and AC will finally throw in the towel 😉

      1. Moderatus and A.C. probably won't show up much between now and November. But, on the other hand, yours truly as a bona-fide traditional conservative Republican will again say that I am proud to be a RAT (Republican Against Trump). 

        1. May your tribe increase, Conserv. Head Banger. Here's hoping the RATs abandon the Trump sinking ship and it goes down to an ignominious (but well deserved) defeat.

          Although the '16 Trump is much more toxic than the '64 Goldwater, I expect the GOP's broad spread throughout the land offers a chance for survival. There may be an analogous reassessment and strengthening of the sane wing of the GOP, a renaissance to bring us a candidate equivalent to ’68 Nixon. At that point, we can have a more reasonable discussion or debate about what the country should be and pursue.

  2. At what point is the Dumpster Fire officially considered a third party candidate?  This is beginning to remind me of Colorado's 2010 gubernatorial race. Trump will never fall as far as Maes, but if he keeps this up, he may not break 40% of the nationwide vote. The Republican party survived the 2010 race in Colorado, and it will survive this presidential election. But it will leave a mark. 

    1. Oh, I think he'll break 40%, but maybe not by much. Reason I know this is some of my kinfolk back in southern Indiana will vote for him no matter what unless he gets caught in bed with a dead young girl or live young boy.

    2. Bingo!  Dan Maes was the outsider businessman who was going to get Colorado state government in the black.  Another human being who was in over his head and didn't know it.  When you have lost the veterans vote by needless pulling the pin on the grenade in your shorts, you face a long road to November.  How many more constituencies can this guy alienate before the election?

      1. Well, Trump did yell at a young mother and noisy child today.

        So much for the traditional view of politicians happy to kiss babies and smile at their mothers. I think Trump will try the new tack of yelling at babies and leering at their mothers, and see if that works.

        1. He seems to be working to offend every voter demographic.  War heroes yesterday.  Fire marshals the day before that.  Moms today.  At this rate he is really going to have to dig for groups to insult by November.  "Let's see.  I haven't said anything about albino dwarfs with speech impediments but today's the day."

  3. As Trump brazenly widens the split in the GOP, there is one additional way he will almost certainly use to poison the political well for years to come:

    Donald Trump's Concession Speech:

    …everything about Trump’s character and conduct suggests that he would be utterly incapable of admitting loss or of urging unity around a victorious opponent.

    Even if buried in a landslide, it seems far more likely that Trump would challenge the validity of the outcome, or lash out to assign blame, or otherwise characterize the vote as an illegitimate denial of the people’s will.

    Pathological bully, braggart, narcissist, confabulator — choose your descriptor. They all apply to the Republican nominee for president in 2016. And these are not the characteristics of someone who would ever — could ever — put nation above self, especially at a moment of personally humiliating defeat. He has rejected every other norm of civil discourse, up to and including insulting a Gold Star mother. He has rejected even the pretense of respecting the rule of law, up to and including inviting a foreign power to conduct espionage against American leaders. Why should a concession be any different?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noam-bramson/donald-trump-concession-speech_b_11298258.html?

    1. He's already laying the groundwork, saying it's probably going to be rigged. I can see him saying the Dem primary was rigged by Clinton but with more states in R hands how the heck is HRC going to rig the general? Or is "the establishment" going to join together, Rs and Ds, to rig it for Clinton? Whatever… it won't be because he lost. That would make him a loser.

    2. He will blame:  (a) the Republican Party elite (including but not limited to the Bush family, Mitt Romney, John McCain), (b) Crooked Hillary, Corrupt Kaine and the Rigged System for stealing the election, (c) Obama (because isn't he to blame for everything in the eyes of some), (d) illegals voting illegally to prevent him from building his wall, and (e) his followers for not working hard enough to overcome a, b, c, and d, and therefore letting down Great Leader. The concession speech will go on for longer than the 70-odd minute long acceptance speech two weeks ago.

  4. Retiring Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) announced today that he will be voting for Hillary. He isn't happy about it, but calls Trump a national embarrassment. 

    Trump also today denounced renewable energy saying solar doesn't work and that wind energy kills birds. He ignores the fact that tall buildings and feral cats kill many more birds than wind turbines.

    I'm thinking Trump loves himself some good old dirty coal. Growing up in Indy, we had the last coal furnace on our block. It was dirty stuff. We went to gas in 1965 as I was getting into the teen years. Coal is needed for a couple more decades as it slowly phases out. By 2036, the only places in Colorado I want to see coal in use; if I'm still around; is running the old steamers on the Durango & Silverton and Cumbres & Toltec.

    1. Not just feral cats. Back when nobody ever thought of keeping a cat indoors only mine was quite the terror where birds, mice and baby bunnies were concerned. In those days you just considered it cats being cats. Lots of people still do. Not us. Our cats are house cats with only supervised outdoor time. Is he concerned about too much sun and wind getting used up or is that just Bachmann?

      1. No, Trump said that solar doesn't work because it's an 18 year payback. Guess his staff isn't aware that solar is now fairly price competitive with fossil fuels. And I agree with the notion that cats should be kept indoors. In past few years, I've had two neighborhood cats from homes on my cul-de-sac use my backyard ornamental grass beds for litter boxes.

        1. Ours are indoor cats, too. They were already declawed when we got them, So I tell them "You can't go outside because you don't have thumbs; so you can't get a job and buy your own kibble."

      2. Perhaps he should make use of his very good brain and read a few reports.  The only thing that is keeping US solar from annihilating utility power today are the soft costs associated with rooftop install.  Germany has had astounding success with their Energiewende ("the energy transition") because they tackled the soft costs, reducing bank financing documents to a standard, two-page document for everyone and nearly eliminated the permitting costs at a local level.

         In the US, soft costs make up approx. 60% of installed costs. 

        Note to Fossilonians: your free market arguments are bullshit. 

         

    1. Just see Mod's post immediately below to calm your fears. (GOP unite behind the dictator!)

      This was actually discussed on Morning Joe today, particularly in light of Eugene Robinson's op-ed questioning whether Trump is actually certifiably crazy.  The only way to get rid of Trump would be for him to withdraw and then Pence would take over (similar to a situation if Trump was incapacitated even more than now).  I think Hillary would destroy Pence if that happened — he's at least as right-wing wacky as Ted Cruz.

      1. Technically, if Trump were to withdraw the 168 members of the RNC would vote on a replacement. Pence is the official VP nominee, Trump the official Presidential nominee. They're two separate posts at this point within the Republican slate; there's no promotion for Pence unless he wins the RNC's vote.

    1. Loyalty is a two way street. Perhaps you can point us to some examples of Trump being "loyal" to the candidates, voters,  or principles of the Republican party.

       

      Waiting….

      1. Or to his investors, his contractors, small business people, workers in his hotels. And Melania better keep getting nips and tucks as needed or she'll be out on her ear too. If she ever isn't suitably impressive as arm candy that will be that.

    2. Moddy, hypothetically, if Trump doesn't get that loyalty you seem to believe he deserves, and if he has a hissy fit and drops out, whose does the RNC put in the game:  Pence? Cruz? Mitt Romney since was the last last standard bearer?

        1. ABC's take is that Trump would need to drop out – there is no mechanism for removing him spelled out. [As a private organization, presumably the RNC could create such a rule.]

          If there is a vacancy, the RNC votes to fill it. They could vote to move up Pence and find someone else to put in for VP. Or they could put someone else in place and Pence would continue to run as VP.

          See http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senior-gop-officials-exploring-options-trump-drops/story?id=41089609

            1. There is a mechanism for replacing due to death or incapacity, such as a stroke, besides the person's stepping down. I suppose they could try to prove incapacitating mental illness but, no matter how crazy the guy really is, I don't think that would have a chance.

              If Trump were not in reality fairly incapacitated by mental illness, he'd have the sense to either step down or pray for a big clearly apparent loss to get himself off the hook for a wide variety of reasons.

    3. Thanks Moddy for confirming what I already knew — you aspire to be a "Good Nazi":

      I will not contribute my name, my work, or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the “good Nazis.” – See more at: http://coloradopols.com/diary/85624/weekend-open-thread-167#comment-612202 – 

          1. Can we refrain from using the term "Nazi? It dilutes the banality of the term when it is used other than what it should be used for."  Bad as Trump is, I don't see him trying to send people to gas chambers. 

            1. It's in reference to the quoted material that doesn't call anyone a Nazi but compares the nature of the rationalization employed by those Rs who support Trump while apparently fully aware of his dangerous unfitness to the rationalizations of those who supported the Nazi regime choosing not to believe the worst of its evil hate spewing rhetoric  Not that supporting Trump is equally as evil as supporting the regime that sent people to gas chambers but that in both case you can't have it both ways.

              You can't be a "good" supporter of something or someone you know to be seriously, dangerously wrong, far beyond having to settle for a candidate with whom you have some important disagreements. The latest on Trump's apparently baffled questioning of why we can't use nukes does edge a possible Trump presidency closer to representing a genocidal threat, though, doesn't it?

              Put that together with his ever more convincing symptoms of having serious mental health issues and the awful, unthinkable precedent of our intel and military communities feeling forced to take some action in the unlikely event that he wins the election presents as a not entirely impossible result. 

              Fortunately it looks like it's never going to come to that, no thanks to the silliest of the hardcore Bernie Busters. And no, I didn't leave out the "or" by mistake.

      1. MapMaker: I'm a Republican voter and I definitely do not have those qualities. Each election, I can find a few Republicans worth voting for. Suggest you save your insults for the likes of those who need them, starting with certain Republicans running in the election for state legislature. 

        1. And, perhaps "the Republican Party" that you imagine it to be, if it ever did exist, hasn't existed in the way you imagine for half a century or more, and most certainly doesn't exist today??  . . . 

          . . . in which case, Mapmaker is not that much incorrect. 

          1. The Party of Lincoln ceased to exist with the Southern Strategy. Where the post-southern strategy GOP is now with the standard bearer it has now is the natural destination it's been headed toward ever since.  

            The Tea Party Crazies were a natural next step and so is Donald Trump. The only trouble they seem to be having with Trump is that he's all id, no filter. He's no more or less racist than all the Republican legislative bodies and Governors who push voter suppression aimed at African Americans, no more devoted to the politics of ethnic, religious and racial hate and fear, no more into pushing xenophobia, no more sexist than what the GOP has been pushing for decades.

            If they're horrified it's because he has dispensed with the polite fig life leaf and doesn't give a damn about GOP economic or social policy, doesn't realize that all the nasty stuff is just supposed to be used as a dog whistle to white blue collar workers to get them to vote against heir own interests and it's supposed to be toned down enough so that nice suburban Republicans don't have to admit that their party has been the party of hate, fear, racism and bigotry since the Southern Strategy.

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