“Paul Ryan” are “fightin’ words” to nationalist patriots like myself and others on the Trump Train.
Ryan will be DOA should he put his hat in the ring in the 2020 GOP primaries. We nationalist patriots simply are too numerous within the ranks of GOP primary and caucus voters. The globalists (open borders, free trade, gradual loss of sovereignty through various multinational treaty arrangements) will transition over to the Democrat Party as they become more comfortable with the globalist policies of the Clinton Crime Syndicate. Some globalist libertarians may run third party, but that will fail when it is clear that it has little electoral appeal outside of a few oligarch strongholds like Alexandria and parts of Manhattan. The main weakness for the globalist scumbags in Davos and The Hague is that they will not be able to vote for their guys in USA elections.
It is true that Ryan could win the GOP nomination if oligarchic insiders are able to veto the clear will of the people with Super Delegates. The GOP will not likely create Super Delegates, for it is not only the Trump Train that will oppose that idea. Ted Cruz activists also know that their man would never win the support of Super Delegates hand picked by Wall Street and K Street insiders.
Assuming for the sake of argument that the GOP chooses to have Super Delegates, and uses them to disenfranchise millions of regular voters for all practical purposes, then, yes, Ryan could win the GOP nomination. Or the oligarchs could choose to nominate another “Bush-Bot” (colorless, robot like Dewey, Rockefeller, Romney, or Bush type of candidate who is a mouthpiece for multinational outsourcers and central bankers). Either way, the GOP nominee under this scenario would lose big time in the general election. The reason is that the Democrat constituent groups may grumble when a Bernie Sanders is beaten by DNC shenanigans and Super Delegates, but most of them choose to remain on the Plantation on Election Day. In the end, they simply do not want to be kicked off the Democrat Gravy Train. Most Republican activists are not the same. They can and will stay home on Election Day, if they have been disenfranchised.
Paul Ryan is an incrementalist in that, so far as may be interpreted from his often inconsistent and vague rhetoric, Trump is more of a radical.
That is not the primary difference between the two men and their respective factions, though. Those of us enjoying our Trump Steaks on the Trump Train do so not simply because we disdain incrementalism as the tactic of choice, but because on substance we support very different policies than the Paul Ryan faction.
The distinction between incrementalism and radicalism better pertains to the differences in style between a Paul Ryan and a Ted Cruz. There is no doubt that Cruz eschews incrementalism for showy efforts to shut down the government or to filibuster; but on substance, Ryan and Cruz share much the same worldview.
That is not the case with Ryan and Trump. We on the Trump Train seek very different policy objectives and outcomes than Ryan. Trade and immigration perhaps best exemplify the real and substantive difference between the two men and their factions.
Most liberty minded millenials need to be shaken up a little bit so that they know at least a little bit about our American political history prior to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Because they clearly know so little about the history of the Republican Party in particular, some continue to make ridiculously ahistorical references that simply show the rest of us how ignorant they are in such matters. The Founding Fathers, who in asserting independence, were the anti-globalists nationalists of their day.
Comments like Paul Ryan is a “Republican” and Donald Trump is a “Populist Democrat” are laughable to people, like myself, who know something about the history of the Republican and the Democrat Parties. I shall provide just three policy examples to explain my point.
1.) Protectionism. Until recent times, the GOP always had been the protectionist party. Even the libertarians’ favorite Republican, Calvin Coolidge, was a strong and consistent protectionist. Republicans took their cues in this regard from Alexander Hamilton himself who understood correctly the incompatibility of free trade and nationalism. It is not until the Administration of George H.W. Bush that we find “free trade” to be a Republican principle.
On the other hand, the Democrats were the free trade party going back to the Southern Slaveholding Agriculturalists demand for free access to European markets for their cotton and tobacco. Free trade has been the consistent view of the Democrat Party, since, of course, they are and always have been the misnamed party of oligarchs.
2.) Immigration. Until recent times, the GOP always had been the party of strong immigration enforcement, reduction in work visas to protect American workers, and reduction in overall numbers of legal immigrants. The Republicans alao sought to inhibit immigration from the Third World, so as to protect American wages and to prevent the creation of a permanent peasant class in the USA.
On the other hand, the Democrats were the party of immigration liberalization. In particular, they favored bringing in unskilled immigrants who would be forced then into Democrat controlled ghettos and turned into reliable Democrat machine voters. Ted Kennedy is the father of the immigration law changes in the 1960s that replaced a merit based system with an “extended family” preference for poor and unskilled migrants. Democrats moreover always pursued amnesty measures as a mechanism for inspiring even more illegal immigration from poorer parts of the world.
3.) Non-interventionism. Taking their cue from George Washington’s Farewell Address, Republicans until recently have avoided the kind of “entangling alliances” that are necessary to be a “world’s policeman.” We have never been strict isolationists, as seen in Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy, for example. Nevertheless, we were the pragmatists who eschewed the globalist idealism of a Wilson or an FDR.
Republicans opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve, because they knew then that the Federal Reserve would be the financial engine for an emergent welfare/warfare state. Republicans opposed the Treaty of Versailles and the development of the United Nations. Democrats favored all these measures, because as in the case of free trade the Democrats are and always have been the misnamed party of oligarchs.
Even a cursory view shows that Trump’s populism is much more in step with historical Republicanism. Ryan’s free trade and immigration liberalization policies are historically Democrat. I am not sure that Ryan is a neoconservative, so I shall not accuse him of being a Democrat in this regard; but he is definitely a historical Democrat when it comes to trade and immigration.
As to the charge of “populism,” there are populist traditions in both the Republican and the Democrat Parties. With the Democrats we find a William Jennings Bryan, and with the Republicans we find a Robert LaFollette. Again, if one knew more about American history, then one would know that the GOP has a long and rich tradition of appealing to working and middle class Americans with what may be called “populist” themes.
Sad to see Amash vote for him for speaker.