Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Over the span of 12 hours, the entire dilemma of the post-Trump GOP was encapsulated in a call-and-response between Paul Ryan and former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. on Thursday night, Ryan had opened a speaker series billed as a conversation about the future of the Republican Party<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump replied by trashing Ryan from Mar-a-Lago the next morning, serving notice of how difficult that conversation may be.<\/p>\n After Ryan suggested that the conservative movement was about more than fealty to the defeated president, Trump called the former House speaker a \u201cRINO\u201d and a loser<\/a>. And then Trump, the rare Republican who has criticized Reagan himself<\/a>, went after Fred Ryan, chair of the board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.<\/p>\n \u201cRonald Reagan would not be happy to see that the Reagan Library is run by the head of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a>. \u201cHow the hell did that happen? No wonder they consistently have RINO speakers like Karl Rove and Paul Ryan. They do nothing for our forward-surging Republican Party!\u201d<\/p>\n One year ahead of the midterm elections, and with the earliest stages of the 2024 primary already underway<\/a>, Trump is still backseat driving the Republican Party at every turn. And every sign suggests that the GOP is still with Trump \u2014 and has little interest in the kind of introspection that Ryan and traditionalists like him are begging for.<\/p>\n Even the Reagan Library\u2019s \u201cTime for Choosing\u201d series \u2014 named for Reagan\u2019s famous 1964 speech<\/a> \u2014 is likely to come with a heavy dose of Trump-ism. Ryan will be followed by a set of speakers more sympathetic to the twice-impeached former president: Mike Pence, the former vice president; Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state; Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador; and Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Aside from Ryan, all of them are prospective 2024 presidential contenders. And the response that Ryan received from Trump will remind them of the necessity of calibrating their remarks for Trump and his base.<\/p>\n Two of the upcoming speakers, Pence<\/a> and Haley<\/a>, have already paid for their lack of total allegiance, and the field is so deferential to Trump that most would likely not challenge him<\/a> if he runs again in 2024.<\/p>\n In Ryan\u2019s case, it\u2019s not just that he was critical of Trump. It\u2019s that the direction he wants conservatives to take is not in vogue in the modern GOP. A large majority of Republicans still believe Trump\u2019s lie<\/a> that the election was rigged. The party has declined to conduct the kinds of election post-mortems<\/a> that both parties have traditionally performed following electoral defeats \u2014 party leaders weren\u2019t willing to have a public discussion about what role Trump might have played.<\/p>\n Nor did many Republican voters see much reason to. When asked in a CBS News poll<\/a> recently whether the GOP\u2019s strategy for 2022 should be to prioritize the party\u2019s message \u2014 telling the public about policies and ideas \u2014 or efforts to change voting laws, 47 percent of Republicans prioritized changing voting rules over ideas.<\/p>\n That\u2019s despite the party continuing to lose market share nationally. Since the 1990s, Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once, in 2004.<\/p>\n Ryan \u2014 once one of the GOP\u2019s brightest stars \u2014 is clearly cognizant of the party\u2019s diminished standing, having run on Mitt Romney\u2019s losing ticket in 2012. Without naming Trump, he said at the Reagan Library that it was \u201chorrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end. So once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads.”<\/p>\n \u201cIf the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or of second-rate imitations, then we\u2019re not going anywhere,\u201d he said, adding that Republican voters would \u201cnot be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago.\u201d<\/p>\n That is a prediction shared by some other establishment-minded Republicans, many of whom take comfort in past examples of the party evolving \u2014 and relatively fast. At the prodding of William F. Buckley in the 1960s, the party did reform, distancing itself from racists and \u201ckooks.\u201d In the 1970s, Richard Nixon\u2019s resignation \u2014 and the tumult within the party that followed \u2014 gave way to Reagan just six years later.<\/p>\n Georgia\u2019s Republican lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, a Trump critic who announced this month that he wouldn\u2019t seek a second term<\/a>, said recently that his “gut tells me that an overwhelming majority of Republicans are going to, over the next few years, begin to realize that there is a new way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump’s hold on the party was not pre-ordained, after all. It was only about five years ago that he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and if Trump doesn\u2019t run again in 2024 \u2014 or if he\u2019s felled by a criminal investigation<\/a> \u2014 his hold on the GOP may loosen over time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt can happen relatively quickly,\u201d said Tom Campbell, a former California Republican congressman and Reagan administration staffer who began collecting registrations last year for his new party, the Common Sense Party<\/a>. \u201cMany people did not know of Donald Trump before he ran for president.\u201d<\/p>\n But so far, the prospect of the party breaking with Trump is not in evidence. In a spring-long purge of the unfaithful, Republicans have censured GOP lawmakers critical of Trump and removed one of his fiercest critics<\/a>, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, from her post in House leadership.<\/p>\n In the past, successful efforts to change the direction of the party \u201creally took the intellectual class of the party to\u2026 articulate an intellectual vision,\u201d said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project before stepping down in December.<\/p>\n Today, he said, \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s missing. The William F. Buckleys of the world have been replaced by the Diamond and Silks<\/a> of the world\u2026 All of the brain trust has essentially left.\u201d<\/p>\n Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.<\/p>\n