GOP 'Window Dressing"

[kpete]

Last edited Fri May 13, 2016, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)

It was exactly the kind of scripted political photo-op that Donald Trump loves to disparage as phony, yet there he was, waving to a phalanx of photographers outside RNC headquarters, smiling and playing along.

For an hour, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee sat face to face with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who just a week ago surprised Trump by declaring he couldn’t yet support his candidacy. And soon after it was over, both men issued a statement expressing optimism about working together – Ryan saying he was “very encouraged” and Trump calling it a “great meeting.”

But those platitudes are window dressing, a temporary distraction from the still-real rift dividing the GOP’s intellectual class personified by Ryan and the frustrated, blue-collar base that has anointed a billionaire populist as the party’s new standard-bearer.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/the-trump-gop-feud-lives-on-223150

Few should be surprised. For years, Republican politicians, focused solely on winning the next election, have issued coded appeals to nativists and racists in the base, while abandoning the party’s most desperate voters. In Congress, they have accommodated extremists determined to lay waste to basic federal government functions. John Boehner, the conservative speaker, was drummed out of office. Today Mr. Ryan, Mr. Boehner’s replacement, can’t get his budget, filled with draconian cuts, past Tea Partiers who condemn him as a free-spending sellout.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/opinion/mr-ryan-warms-up-to-mr-trump.html?_r=1

Save us all the faux drama. We already know how this star-crossed courtship is going to end: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) will decide that Donald Trump isn’t such an ogre after all, and they’ll live unhappily ever after.

Ryan will be unhappy, at least. Trump has stolen his party, and there’s nothing Ryan can do in the short term to get it back.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ryan-and-trumps-painful-sham/2016/05/12/7e6bccfa-1876-11e6-924d-838753295f9a_story.html

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/13/1526073/-Abbreviated-pundit-roundup-Analyzing-the-Ryan-Trump-meeting

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

[Nitram]

2. It wasn't Trump's face that Ryan was sucking.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Photo-ops are only 'phony' when someone else does them...

Trump's Rules.

[MisterP]

4. "GOP intellectual" means "poncy outsourcers who've never had to work a day in their lives"