Paul Ryan & The Trumpocalypse: Post-Debate Edition

By: Meredith Kelly

The reviews of last night’s hot mess of a GOP presidential debate are in: Rowdy,Unruly, Raucous, Chaotic. Sounds eerily similar to Speaker Ryan’s House Republican Caucus, the dysfunction of which continues to rival that of its party’s presidential primary.

The self-described “budget guy’s” months-long campaign to return the House to “regular order” was dealt another blow yesterday when, according to POLITICO,the influential Republican Study Committee’s membership voted to abandon Ryan’s budget deal. Speaker Ryan’s inability to lead his own caucus toward accomplishing his most basic legislative goal certainly does not bode well for his effort to counteract Trump and “turn the GOP into a party of serious policy,” as TIME noted yesterday.

There’s no doubt that last night’s train wreck of a debate was cringe-worthy, but Speaker Ryan has to be the most troubled by it, considering that his “Year of Ideas” gets further and further from reach with every insult Donald Trump dishes. If the Speaker can’t even lead his own caucus and prevent them from reneging on his budget deal, we wish him the best with his quest to transform his party’s likely nominee from an entertainer to a man of “serious policy.” Put simply, Paul Ryan is no match for Trump.

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“The leadership of the Republican Study Committee privately decided Thursday they would push top House lawmakers to abandon the 2015 budget deal and push for steep cuts, the group’s chairman wrote in an email to colleagues.” [POLITICO, 2/25/16]