{"id":24221,"date":"2016-03-29T08:01:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/trump-ryan-at-odds-over-future-of-the-gop\/"},"modified":"2016-03-29T08:01:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T15:01:23","slug":"trump-ryan-at-odds-over-future-of-the-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/trump-ryan-at-odds-over-future-of-the-gop\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump, Ryan at odds over future of the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 Donald Trump wants to win the White House in the fall. Paul Ryan wants to save his own vision of the Republican Party for the future.<\/p>\n

Those goals put Trump and Ryan increasingly at odds over both tone and substance as the businessman barrels toward the GOP presidential nomination. While Ryan is appealing for political civility and a party rooted in traditional conservative principles, Trump is bucking campaign decorum and embracing policy positions that are sharply at odds with years of GOP orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Their starkly different visions for the Republican Party are a microcosm of the broader fissures roiling the GOP. And if Trump does become the Republican nominee, he and the House speaker\u2019s ability to work together could be the first test of whether a party in this much turmoil can stay together.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s obviously running on issues that are contrary to conservatives and at odds with what a lot of what Paul Ryan believes,\u201d said Peter Wehner, a former adviser to President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

For now, Trump and Ryan are engaged largely in a cold war, with the politicians only occasionally mentioning each other by name. Ryan has picked key moments to draw implicit contrasts with Trump, including condemning the billionaire\u2019s refusal to take responsibility for violence at his rallies. Trump will launch the next volley Tuesday when he campaigns in Ryan\u2019s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, ahead of the state\u2019s April 5 primary.<\/p>\n

Trump, in his trademark contradictory style, has both praised Ryan and ominously warned the speaker against crossing him.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaul Ryan, I don\u2019t know him well, but I\u2019m sure I\u2019m going to get along with him, and if I don\u2019t, he\u2019s going to have to pay a big price, OK?\u201d Trump said after his victories on Super Tuesday. A week later, after speaking with Ryan by phone, Trump said of the speaker: \u201cI like him a lot. I respect him a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

People close to Ryan say the Wisconsin lawmaker is in disbelief about Trump\u2019s staying power. While he\u2019s publicly vowed to support whomever his party nominates, Ryan has privately said he\u2019s focused on trying to keep the GOP\u2019s House majority this fall and on fundraising for the party \u2014 leaving some friends with the impression that he would be a less-than-enthusiastic Trump backer in a general election.<\/p>\n

Looming large are Ryan\u2019s own political ambitions. He passed on running for the White House in 2016, but some Republicans still harbor hopes that the House speaker could emerge as the nominee in a contested convention fight this summer. That\u2019s if Trump or rival Ted Cruz fail to accumulate the delegates needed to clinch the nomination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be less than honest with you if I said people are not mentioning a Ryan candidacy from time to time,\u201d said Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican who meets regularly with Ryan. \u201cClearly there are many in Congress who see Paul Ryan as a consensus candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan has vigorously denied that he\u2019s interested, though he was similarly definitive last year when he rebuffed calls to run for the speaker\u2019s job. He\u2019s also insisted that his role as chairman of the July convention requires him to remain officially neutral despite his obvious displeasure with Trump.<\/p>\n

Yet Ryan\u2019s refusal to fully disavow Trump has left him open to criticism that he either cares too much about keeping the real estate mogul\u2019s enthusiastic supporters in the Republican fold or that he doesn\u2019t fully understand the threat posed by the GOP front-runner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe barbarian is at the gate, and Paul Ryan wants to talk sense to him?\u201d wrote David D. Haynes, the editorial page editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the largest newspaper in Ryan\u2019s home state.<\/p>\n

Ryan has been working behind the scenes to produce plans on issues including health care, the economy and national security. Though not the original intent of Ryan\u2019s \u201cagenda project,\u201d the effort could give Republicans something to run on if they can\u2019t or don\u2019t want to hitch themselves to the GOP nominee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what the American people are starved for is a positive agenda,\u201d said Rep Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the House Budget Committee and a close Ryan ally.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s own policy proposals, though often vague, have sometimes sharply conflicted with where Ryan is trying to position the party, particularly on economic issues.<\/p>\n

Ryan rose to prominence among Republicans for spending proposals that eventually would privatize government entitlement programs, dramatically reducing those operations\u2019 share of federal spending over time. While Trump has joined Republicans in bemoaning alleged abuses of entitlement programs, he\u2019s long blasted proposals like Ryan\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Republicans, if you think you are going to change very substantially for the worse Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in any substantial way, and at the same time you think you are going to win elections, it just really is not going to happen,\u201d Trump said during a 2013 appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.<\/p>\n

Trump has also spent decades criticizing U.S. trade policy and advocating steep tariffs on Chinese imports. It\u2019s a protectionist argument that puts him at odds with decades of Republican support for international trade, though he\u2019s in line with a growing contingent of House Republicans who see sweeping foreign trade deals as detrimental to American workers.<\/p>\n

Before becoming speaker, Ryan was among the most vocal House Republicans in backing trade agreements, including President Barack Obama\u2019s Asia-Pacific pact. As speaker, Ryan has yet to schedule a vote on the Pacific Rim deal, saying he and other members are carefully vetting the details.<\/p>\n

Despite their differences, some Ryan allies see policy as an area where Ryan could wield influence with Trump if the billionaire becomes the nominee or even president.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it will dawn on (Trump) that he needs an actual agenda,\u201d Wehner said. \u201cThere\u2019s nobody better than Paul Ryan to supply it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Julie Pace at http:\/\/twitter.com\/jpaceDC, Erica Werner at http:\/\/twitter.com\/ericawerner, and Bill Barrow at http:\/\/twitter.com\/BillBarrowAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Donald Trump wants to win the White House in the fall. Paul Ryan wants to save his own vision of the Republican Party for the future. Those goals put Trump and Ryan increasingly at odds over both tone and substance as the businessman barrels toward the GOP presidential nomination. While Ryan is appealing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":24222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-24221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24221"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}