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Paul Ryan failed the morality test again in his press conference today announcing his decision not to run for reelection. When asked about whether his decision had anything to do with the President, he repeatedly said he was “grateful” to Donald Trump for giving him the opportunity to pass their agenda. So for Ryan, on balance, Trump’s threat to our democracy is next to nothing compared to lowering taxes on corporations and the rich.
That’s been Ryan’s attitude all along. During the presidential campaign, it didn’t matter whether Trump said something that was “the textbook definition of a racist comment” as long as he let Paul Ryan advance the corporatist agenda.
And now it doesn’t matter to Ryan that Trump has heaped scorn on the media and the judiciary and threatens to lurch the country into a trade war, a real war, and a constitutional crisis. All that matters is that Trump allowed Ryan to pass those tax cuts.
There appears to be nothing bad that Trump could do that would, in Ryan’s mind, outweigh the benefits of those tax cuts.
That is moral myopia.
Ryan made his pact with the devil, and even today, he can’t bring himself to criticize the devil.
— Rothschild is executive editor of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
