The Paul Ryan Delusion
There is no reason to believe that any future Republican President would share the House Speaker’s view of Congress’s role. PHOTOGRAPH BY ZACH GIBSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES / REDUX
There are essentially two Republican parties right now: the Party of Donald J. Trump and the Party of House Speaker Paul Ryan—who has, nonetheless, endorsed Trump for President. One of the ways in which members of the Ryan faction delude themselves is by believing that Ryan’s policies would dominate if Trump were President and Ryan remained Speaker of the House.
The view of senior House Republicans with whom I talked over the past month, for a piece in this week’s magazine, was that Trump is “malleable,” as Congressman Tom Price, the chairman of the Budget Committee, put it. They believe that Trump, as President, can be pressed into service as a reliable signature for the Ryan agenda, which has been thwarted by a slow-moving Senate and by Obama’s veto pen. “I think we will work hand in glove, I really do,” Price told me on May 16th.






