MILWAUKEE — When U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin faced a long-shot opponent in a sleepy Republican primary two years ago, the turnout was minuscule.
About 8 percent of voting-age adults went to the polls.
Ryan faces another long shot Tuesday, Paul Nehlen, but this time his race has received a weeklong bath of national attention thanks to Donald Trump's short, strange and possibly self-destructive intervention in Wisconsin politics.
Whether Trump has had any influence at all on this contest will become clear from the turnout as well as the outcome in Ryan's 1st Congressional District primary.
But the biggest impacts are likely to be found elsewhere.
Trump's brief rebuke of Ryan — withholding his endorsement last Tuesday and praising his opponent — dismayed GOP leaders already frazzled by the presidential nominee's sliding national poll numbers and flair for disruption and controversy.
It left the party looking more divided than ever.
And in Wisconsin, a battleground state where Trump is struggling, it seemed to backfire, irritating GOP officials who've endorsed Trump and alienating some who haven't.
Ryan's popularity ratings in the state are far higher than Trump's among voters inside and outside the party. Nationally, Trump now trails Democrat Hillary Clinton by an average of 7 to 8 points. In new CBS/YouGov polls, Clinton is up by 12 in the key battleground of Virginia and down by only 2 in the traditionally safe GOP state of Arizona.
Trump's perfunctory peace offering to Ryan last Friday in Green Bay was a tacit acknowledgment that the fight he had picked with the House speaker and other Republican officeholders was damaging Trump more than anyone he was feuding with. It was meant to quiet that controversy and contain the intraparty divisions over his candidacy.
"I understand and embrace the wisdom of Ronald Reagan's 'big tent' ... that my 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy," said Trump, reading from notes. "We will have disagreements, but we will disagree as friends and never stop working together toward victory."
But Trump's obligatory gesture did little to put to bed the party's underlying discord and the very real political distance between him and Ryan, the two most important Republicans in the country.
On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, commentator Matthew Dowd, the strategist for President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election, said Trump's dutiful endorsement statement in Green Bay made the nominee seem "like a tranquilized circus lion that had bitten too many people in the audience."
When Ryan and Trump are backing each other up, it's typically couched in political necessity and obligation.
When they are being themselves, the mutual frustration behind their dysfunctional relationship comes to the fore.
That was clear in Trump's case when he took his shots at Ryan in a lengthy sit-down with The Washington Post's Philip Rucker last Tuesday. Asked whether he was supporting the speaker in his primary, Trump was noncommittal and Rucker changed the subject. Trump then brought up Ryan again on his own, unprompted:
TRUMP: "You want me to give you an exact quote on ... Paul Ryan? You were asking."
RUCKER: "Yeah, please do."
TRUMP: "OK, you're asking me if I'm supporting Paul Ryan?"
RUCKER: "Yeah, if you're supporting Paul Ryan."
TRUMP: "I'm not quite there yet."
Then he added: "I like Paul. But these are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership."
Trump walked back those remarks three days later with his endorsement in Green Bay.
In response, a Ryan aide said the House speaker "appreciates the gesture and is going to continue to focus on earning the endorsement of the voters in southern Wisconsin."
But Ryan's own dismay with Trump was clear in a round of local radio interviews he did Thursday and Friday.
Asked by WISN's Jay Weber whether his differences with Trump were going to linger, Ryan said, "Heck if I know. ... I am not going to try to psychoanalyze this stuff."
He told WTMJ's Charlie Sykes, "I see no purpose in doing this tit-for-tat, petty back and forth with Donald Trump, because it serves no good purpose in my mind."
The most revealing exchange may have been one on Friday with WISN's Mark Belling, who asked Ryan if he can offer "enthusiastic support of Trump" while criticizing his rhetoric and ideas.
"It's a good question. I don't know if I have a clear answer other than to say I hope he doesn't keep doing things like this that distort conservative principles," Ryan said, referring specifically to Trump's feud with the Gold Star parents of a fallen Muslim American soldier.
About the Author
