# Trump has declared war on the GOP, Paul Ryan. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 11, 2016, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245 "2016-10-11T15:19:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/81 "2016-10-11T22:40:39Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > However I think Ryan and GOP would have been better off if he just was quiet about Trump and emphasizing helping his members. That’s what McConnell does, you never hear him speaking either way about Trump. I’m not sure he really wanted his “man the lifeboats” conference call to be a public announcement though I suppose it was inevitably going to get out. But to some degree, this wasn’t decided by him. There isn’t an obvious reason why we are all focused on Ryan’s tightrope act instead of talking about McConnell’s maintaining of periscope depth. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/82 "2016-10-11T22:47:47Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > After the election: > > “Lying Hillary hired me to destroy the GOP for her, which proves how crooked she really is. See? I was right all along!” Trump will make America great again by losing. Checkmate, liberals. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/83 "2016-10-11T23:04:30Z")
Trump is still at it, tweeting again attacking “Foul mouthed McCain”. Signs are looking good for another 3AM twitter storm! Just checked Elizabeth Warren’s twitter, she hasn’t directly attacked Trump for a while, she should be poking him relentlessly at the moment, I am dissapoint. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/84 "2016-10-11T23:08:55Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > I think one notable American success of the populist movement was the direct election of Senators rather than through state legislatures. I leave it to you as to whether that’s “non-toxic”. The Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments are often called “The Populist Amendments.” You noted the 17th. I think nearly every sane person considers the 19th to be non-toxic, and, in fact, wholly admirable. The 18th was well-intentioned…and we all know where that leads. It was “A good idea at the time.” Alas, the results were terribly toxic. As to the 16th, well, there’s definitely gonna be some disagreement, but it was probably the only way the U.S. could have grown up into an industrial powerhouse and the arsenal (or just arse) of democracy. The economy was simply too large, and the government’s needs too vast, to get by on old-fashioned excise taxes. Call this one semi-toxic, like a good dose of salts. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/85 "2016-10-11T23:12:19Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Trump is still at it, tweeting again attacking “Foul mouthed McCain”. Signs are looking good for another 3AM twitter storm! Just checked Elizabeth Warren’s twitter, she hasn’t directly attacked Trump for a while, she should be poking him relentlessly at the moment, I am dissapoint. Warren’s earlier childish twiiter attacks made me embarrassed for her. I’m quite glad she’s decided to stop it. She’s a Senator, former Harvard law professor and a financial guru; twitter taunts are incredibly beneath her. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/86 "2016-10-11T23:16:08Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > I’ve only skimmed the conversation to this point, so apologies if someone else has already stated something like this. > > The smartest thing Republicans could do today is fully repudiate their nominee. If they don’t, they will sacrifice not just the election, but the integrity of the entire process. > > Further, their nutty base is already so whipped up, I am genuinely afraid for Clinton, Obama and others around them. I fear an assassination attempt cannot be far off – especially with the escalating rhetoric about locking her up and having the election “stolen” from the alt-right crowd. > > I am glad the Republican party is imploding, as it is long overdue to do. But with this event comes some potentially serious consequences. > **[Right-Wing Extremists Are More Threatening Than ISIS](https://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/12/right-wing-extremists-militants-bigger-threat-america-isis-jihadists-422743.html)** > > Since 2002, right-wing militants have killed more people in the United States than jihadis have. > [@](#): > > “Law enforcement agencies in the United States consider anti-government violent extremists, not radicalized Muslims, to be the most severe threat of political violence that they face,” the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security reported this past June, based on surveys of 382 law enforcement groups. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/87 "2016-10-11T23:38:23Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Does Trump know that these polls are completely bogus? Is he actually that stupid and self deluded, or is this just bluster for his base? How stupid is he really? He doesn’t care and his voters don’t care. The Republican Party had been committed to the Big Lie for decades now. Facts haven’t mattered to them for ever. [QUOTE=snowthx;19693582 I expect there will be people saying Trump was the wrong kind of right-wing candidate - too flawed - there will be a better, and further right, candidate next time. [/QUOTE] All along, there have been Republicans saying that Trump isn’t a real conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/88 "2016-10-11T23:39:17Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > [http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/12/right-wing-extremists-militants-bigger-threat-america-isis-jihadists-422743.html](http://www.newsweek.com/2016/02/12/right-wing-extremists-militants-bigger-threat-america-isis-jihadists-422743.html) Unfortunately, what you shared has been true for quite some time. This election cycle is bringing the feelings of these people in our country who feel so disenfranchised to the fore, encouraged and inflamed by Trump and his rhetoric. Many of them are on a hair trigger at this point. Literally. (Said in the classic sense of the word.) ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/89 "2016-10-11T23:39:25Z")
> [@up\_the\_junction](#): > > It seems like politicians have dissociated themselves from the candidate but the party hasn’t quite: does the GOP have a candidate standing for election for the presidency or not? Y’know, that was discussed during the primaries quite a bit – American “national” parties are a peculiar sort of beast insofar as unlike, say, Tories v. Labour, just about _ANYONE_ can just proclaim him/herself a Republican or Democrat and run for high national office without ever having to earn stripes on the trenches of the organization (heck, they don’t even have to proclaim themselves one, come to think of it, if their own state has an open primary…). Trump and Sanders are both examples of this. In practice it’s not so much that the Republican Party has a candidate or the Democratic party has a candidate, as that there are the guaranteed Republican Ballot Spot and Democratic Ballot Spot, and ever since the institutionalization of primaries post-1972 aspirants compete \*directly \*to win one of them. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > As for this, despite loathing Trump and everything he stands for, the one thing he’s gotten right is also what Sanders got right: he tapped into the real and legitimate anger of the working poor in a way that Democrats haven’t done in decades, and Republicans haven’t done in longer (arguably Reagan did, but his union-busting renders that a pretty controversial claim). > > Populism isn’t necessarily toxic, and I would freakin’ love for Democrats to take some lessons from this campaign about returning to their roots. All those union workers who are voting for Trump? That’s because they’ve been abandoned by Democrats. Let’s get Democratic candidates who run on a less toxic populist platform and see where we can go. Well yes, in the best case scenario, an actual collapse of the Republican Party into factional mayhem could in a way free the Democrats from the Fear Of The Word Liberal so that they can actually try and DO something for the working class. OTOH if the R division looks bad enough the mainstream D’s may instead be tempted to go up to the “Business Republicans” and say: _“Look guys, we can be good for your bottom line, and admit it, you don’t mind who gets married to whom as long as the stock price is up. So why identify with these flyover losers?”_ and we wind up with the “centerline” shifted even further right. Or else it emboldens some of the Dems’ own factions into demanding a hard left turn or at least some heavy duty pandering under the premise of there no longer being the risk of losing to the R’s, and they wind up overreaching and shooting themselves in the foot as is their tradition. The fault lines within a post-Trump GOP are not neat enough yet to be able to predict what will they look like after they emerge from the smoke of the inevitable Nov 2016-Nov 2018 barroom brawl and you wash the mud and blood off the survivors to see who came out on top. A party is not in a good position if it loses a third to two fifths of its “base” to a cult. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/90 "2016-10-11T23:40:57Z")
One interesting note: The tweets today, were made using an iPhone. Trump uses an Android phone. Either he has switched phones, or this is campaign tweets. These used to be done by Kelly Anne or an associate, but she has gone incognito (again) and people are thinking that Bannon is fully in control. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo argues the destruction of Paul Ryan was (and still is) Bannon’s goal, but Trump has allowed him to dream of greater things: > **[Report: Trump Camp CEO Thought Paul Ryan ‘The Enemy’ While At Breitbart](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-bannon-paul-ryan-ememy-emails)** > > Steve Bannon, the current Trump campaign CEO who's on leave from his position as the chairman of Breitbart News, reportedly told a staffer for the conservative news site in December that he wanted… ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/91 "2016-10-11T23:53:06Z")
I don’t think the republicans have the balls to fight off Trump. His voters will intimidate their representatives into supporting him. I think Ryan will get soft the moment his polls dip and the moment Trump’s show any signs of going up. The math isn’t there for a Trump victory outright but this election could go well past election night. And if it does then this will get unbelievably, off-the-charts nasty. The longer Trump stays in the race the more damage he will inflict. Think about it: he’s already almost certainly lost the moderate voters, but his credentials within the party are still solid, with 70-80 percent of republicans basically saying he should remain in the race. Trump is going to go too far – God only knows what that will be, but the public will, over time, become palpably frightened and viscerally disgusted with the existence of the republican party. I think the best thing that could happen for the GOP is for Trump to quit. Replacement or no replacement, if his children approach him and convince him he has to pull the plug to save his brand, then that’ll be the win-win for the Trump’s and the GOP. Both would be badly wounded and scarred but will live to fight another day. But if he makes it through election night and does what I think he’s capable of doing and trying to contest the election and tie up the results in the courts and God knows whatever else…it will burn these images into the minds of voters for a generation and more. I think it is a definite possibility. Donald Trump will do massive damage to the republican party now - of that there can be no doubt. It’s just a question of whether it will be damage that the party can recover from in 2-4 years with some cleansing and re-branding. Or will it be the Great Depression - New Deal kind that pushed an entire generation to lean Democratic even long after losing a chunk of its racist ‘base’? That is the question. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/92 "2016-10-11T23:55:54Z")
To the extent that the Democrats stopped speaking to the concerns of the working class, it’s because the working class decided that racial resentment, abortion, homophobia, religious supremacism and other cultural issues were more important to them than bread-and-butter policy matters that would actually benefit them and improve their lives. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/93 "2016-10-12T00:11:38Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > This is one of the big questions, for sure. > > But I think there’s a reasonable case to be made that if Trump loses by 10 that the brand of toxic populism will be damaged by the loss. If Trump merely loses the election in an obvious landslide and calls it a night, then we’re still left with a market for toxic populism. Their frustration won’t go away, and if anything they will feel even more embittered by the perception that elites unified to mute their voices. These people might seem deluded to us but they actually truly believe that they have a chance to win back their America – Trump represents that dream. These are the same forces that fueled the anti-civil rights movements of the 1960s and the Jim Crow era in the aftermath of the 1870s Reconstruction period, movements based on the notion that their America, their status and standing in society are under attack and that '_someone needs to do somethin’ about it’_. That won’t go away if Trump loses and says “Well folks I tried.” That only goes away when it gets so ugly, so radioactive that even some within the movement begin to consult their own conscience on a human level and begin to have doubts about their own behavior. It only changes when people begin to see the obvious: that to support such madness not only threatens to disrupt the lives of ‘the others’ but also their own well-being. I think Trump is on the verge of unleashing these forces, which is terrifying. But on the other side of it is a profound shock and disgust that will perhaps force even some of the people who think he’s a white messiah now to have second thoughts. If nothing else it would probably force the indy-leaning millennials to realize, “No, both sides don’t do it,” and maybe we have more important things to worry about than whether or not Hillary Clinton got money from Wall Street. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/94 "2016-10-12T00:12:33Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments are often called “The Populist Amendments.” You noted the 17th. I think nearly every sane person considers the 19th to be non-toxic, and, in fact, wholly admirable. Sorry, but absolutely no. They are called the **Progressive** Amendments. The Progressives and the Populists were two very different movements. They often get confused, but all the reforms we take for granted today were pushed by the Progressives, not the Populists. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/95 "2016-10-12T00:17:25Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > To the extent that the Democrats stopped speaking to the concerns of the working class, it’s because the working class decided that racial resentment, abortion, homophobia, religious supremacism and other cultural issues were more important to them than bread-and-butter policy matters that would actually benefit them and improve their lives. Yep, I’m frankly tired of hearing about how mainstream democrats abandoned the working class – they didn’t. They were put into minority status by people who at the time were part of a stronger (white) middle class and decided that going on taxpayer funded panty raids and turning vaginas into crime scenes was more important than electing people who could fight for labor and the middle class. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/96 "2016-10-12T00:37:45Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > To the extent that the Democrats stopped speaking to the concerns of the working class, it’s because the working class decided that racial resentment, abortion, homophobia, religious supremacism and other cultural issues were more important to them than bread-and-butter policy matters that would actually benefit them and improve their lives. Don’t you think they were helped along with that thinking by a gratuitous Republican party ginning up their passions when needed during election cycles via their favorite mouthpiece, Fox “News?” ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/97 "2016-10-12T00:44:09Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Warren’s earlier childish twiiter attacks made me embarrassed for her. I’m quite glad she’s decided to stop it. She’s a Senator, former Harvard law professor and a financial guru; twitter taunts are incredibly beneath her. It’s clear that when Trump is attacked or threatened by a strong woman he cannot help himself lashing out, even more than when attacked in general. As the second most prominent female Democrat, Warren is the one who is in the position to do that. Leave Clinton out of it and get Warren to sling the mud. Anything that helps to push Trump into total implosion is fair game in my book. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/98 "2016-10-12T00:46:14Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Don’t you think they were helped along with that thinking by a gratuitous Republican party ginning up their passions when needed during election cycles via their favorite mouthpiece, Fox “News?” Fox News didn’t exist in 1964. But, yeah. Still, the Republicans and Fox News are only half the story. The other half of the story are the people who let it happen to them. I don’t excuse them. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/99 "2016-10-12T01:05:58Z")
Just a reminder that Reince Priebus, without the vowels, is RNC PR BS Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night! ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245/100 "2016-10-12T01:08:50Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Just a reminder that Reince Priebus, without the vowels, is > > RNC PR BS > > Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night! The Huff post figured that out in 2013. > **[RNC PR BS](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rnc-pr-bs_b_2919334)** > > The Republican Party is at a crossroads. It could modernize some of its positions and attitudes, in a bid to stay relevant to national politics in 21st century America. Or it could shrink to becoming a party of the South, the Plains, and a dwindling... Go ahead and take the night off. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-has-declared-war-on-the-gop-paul-ryan/768245.md?page=6)