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week's Republican convention represents a turning point for Donald
Trump. But it will be no less a turning point for House Speaker Paul
Ryan—and, by extension, for the rest of the Republican Party.
Paul Ryan Has Tricky Role of Unifier at Trump’s Unconventional GOP Convention
House speaker will walk a tightrope at next week’s Republican convention as Trump takes control
ENLARGE
House Speaker Paul
Ryan of Wisconsin, shown last month arriving at his Washington office,
will speak next Tuesday night at the Republican convention.
Photo:
J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
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Mr. Ryan will be the chairman of the convention and, as such, walking a tightrope. He has endorsed but not embraced Mr. Trump. His convention role is largely symbolic but nevertheless important. In carrying it out, he must try to please both Mr. Trump’s many supporters, and the many party regulars who are trying to look away from (and perhaps beyond) their presumptive nominee.
In short, Mr. Ryan will be trying to do the near-impossible: Unify a party while standing a bit apart from the man who at the convention takes his place, at least for now, as the nominal leader of that party.
But that is only the beginning of the balancing acts for Mr. Ryan. He will play a leading role in the continuing Republican drama regardless of the outcome of November’s election.
If Mr. Trump wins, many Republicans hope and assume the lead in setting policy can be moved down Pennsylvania Avenue, from the White House to a Congress led by Mr. Ryan as well as Senate leader Mitch McConnell and a renewed Republican majority.
This is precisely the notion Mr. Ryan has been advancing in recent weeks by rolling out in the House a series of proposals designed to show what a Congress-led Republican agenda on taxes, health and education can look like. Nobody is more hopeful that this approach will take root than are Mr. Ryan’s compatriots in the party’s conservative wing, who disagree with Mr. Trump on plenty, including trade and immigration.
Mr. Ryan has explained his endorsement of Mr. Trump by saying the business leader would, as president, sign into law the pieces of that Republican agenda. Yet it is far from clear that Mr. Trump, hardly a shy and retiring sort, would be willing to see policy-making power move away from him. It’s also unclear how Mr. Ryan would respond when a President Trump asked him to get to work passing legislation to dismantle free-trade treaties or provide funds to build a new wall along the Mexican border.
If Mr. Trump loses, on the other hand, the Ryan role would be radically different. The one-time GOP vice presidential nominee would instantly become the de facto leader of the party, more free than ever to try to mold it in his own image and likeness.
It’s safe to say Republicans would be in a mess. Mr. Trump would have activated millions of supporters who have bought into his combative populism and won’t be ready to let it go, with or without Mr. Trump. This year’s primary battles revealed just how deeply many Republicans mistrust their own party’s establishment, and Mr. Ryan now represents that establishment to many of them.
But offsetting that populist army would be a resurgent force of social and ideological conservatives who, in the wake of a defeat by a man they distrusted and in some cases flatly opposed, will be ready to reassert their primacy. The rift could well be a deep and angry one, and it will be Mr. Ryan’s to try to close. The problems would start with replaying the debate of the last four years over the party’s stance on immigration and whether it needs to do more to appeal to Hispanics.
Mr. Ryan’s task would be further complicated by the fact that he has his own enemies within. Trusted as he is by most conservatives, some in the tea-party wing think he has been too representative of the Washington establishment they hate and too open to working with Democrats. Meantime, he is being actively opposed in the Republican primary in his district in Wisconsin that isn’t especially friendly for a Republican in a general election.
So, given all that, how does he propose to handle the convention next week? He plans to give a speech Tuesday night that aides say will stress the policy ideas he has been laying out, which he argues are what can unite Republicans. And he plans to spend a fair amount of time working what amounts to the grass-roots of a convention—the meetings of state delegations.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
