Why Donald Trump, Not Paul Ryan, Is Setting the G.O.P. Agenda
By Jennifer Steinhauer
June 3, 2016
Key Highlights
[…]Speaker Paul D. Ryan delivered his party’s weekly address on Friday — a rarity — giving a peek at the House Republican agenda that he and his colleagues will begin to roll out next week. That agenda was originally supposed to counter Donald J. Trump, whose views often stand apart from the party’s policy traditions. But now that Mr. Ryan has officially endorsed his party’s presumptive nominee, he says that his policy ideas will magically become Mr. Trump’s, and that the nominee will help advertise them this fall and eventually promulgate them from the White House.
[…]Mr. Trump has the bigger megaphone. Mr. Trump, long before he secured his party’s nomination, has shown a remarkable ability for getting television coverage of his pronouncements. His remarks about building a wall between the United States and Mexico (not embraced by Mr. Ryan), barring most Muslims from entering the country (ditto), and ending free trade deals (again) have gotten constant coverage. Mr. Ryan’s promises to end poverty and to address executive authority? Not so much
[…]Mr. Trump has already beaten Mr. Ryan’s agenda among Republican voters.The Republican candidates who ran for president this year, like Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and the former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, may have differed with Mr. Ryan on the margins on policy, but they hewed to the same core beliefs. Mr. Trump didn’t simply beat those candidates, he destroyed them, often in a highly personal way. The traditional Republican agenda is not selling this year.
[…]If there is party unity, it has been around Mr. Trump, not Mr. Ryan. The speaker is widely viewed as endorsing Mr. Trump to provide the party with the unity necessary to get House members re-elected and to help Mr. Ryan keep his day job. But if there is any unity in the party, it stems from Mr. Trump’s agenda; Mr. Ryan has struggled to get even basic legislation passed.
[…]Mr. Ryan, who has been a passionate voice against Mr. Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, may have a hard time pressing the “inclusive” agenda he has been touting while at the same time promising allegiance to Mr. Trump. His voice of skepticism, not his agenda, is what got Mr. Ryan the most attention, and putting it on the shelf may not serve him well.