A new book has conjured the specter – whether based in fact or fiction – of a Crying Ryan. Former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan is said to have sobbed uncontrollably over the Jan. 6 unrest at the US Capitol. It has also inspired another embittered “elite” (his term) to lob vicious barbs at supporters of Donald Trump as he expresses his frustration that the uncouth cretins won’t let him “understand” them. It has been nearly six years since the 2016 presidential election rocked the Washington establishment to its very core, and the attitudes that brought about that political earthquake still persist.
Both examples share the same shortsighted trait. They evince a genuine belief that the American people should feel chastened by the fact that their would-be betters are disappointed in them.
Crying Ryan: Saltwater RINO
Big-box media veteran Mark Leibovich’s new book is titled Thank You For Your Servitude. That’s meant to be a dig at “the supplicant fanboys who permitted Donald Trump’s depravity to be inflicted on the rest of us.”
Sagging CNN got the “scoop” on Leibovich’s description of Ryan’s moment of weepiness. Here is how the network worded it, loaded Jan. 6 framing and all:
“Ryan, who has criticized former President Donald Trump and his hold on the Republican Party, ‘found himself sobbing’ during the insurrection, journalist Mark Leibovich writes in his forthcoming book …
“‘I spent my whole adult life in that building,’ Ryan, who served as a Republican congressman from Wisconsin for two decades, later told Leibovich, according to the book. ‘And I saw my friends, a lot of cops, some of my old security detail – I’m still friends with a bunch of those guys. It really disturbed me, foundationally.’
“Leibovich writes that Ryan told him he’s not much of a crier, but ‘something snapped in him’ as he watched the Capitol attack.”
A question immediately comes to mind upon reading the above: Who outside of the suffocating establishment bubble is going to be in the least bit swayed by this?
Career politicians on both sides of the aisle are perhaps more loathed today than at any time in modern US history. Are we to believe that regular Americans will be moved by the notion that a man who “spent my whole adult life” on Capitol Hill, holding down a prime seat at the congressional trough “for two decades,” is “foundationally” shaken by what he sees as a gross lack of respect for what the halls of power in Washington, DC, represent?
Paul Ryan (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Leave all controversy over Jan. 6 aside for a moment. The fundamental point is this: No one is conceding to Paul Ryan one inch of moral high ground. Congressional favorability ratings have wallowed under 20% for years. A crying Ryan is about as effective PR-wise as having the Treasury Department roll out an inconsolable IRS agent on April 16 to lament that Americans don’t pay more in taxes.
Do our political elites still not understand how low they have sunk in the eyes of the citizenry they have so manifestly failed to serve for some three-plus decades now?
I’m Reaching Out to You, Bigots
It would seem they do not, if one is to read Joe Klein’s astonishing July 8 review of Leibovich’s tome in a prominent DC newspaper.
Klein has spent 50 years carving out a comfortable living at various establishment media and book publishing outlets. Here’s how he begins:
“As a certifiably ‘serious’ person, I’ve spent the past seven years trying to understand Trump voters. After all, they’re our fellow citizens. Their flagrant anger must have some justification. It must be our fault. I mean, extensive analysis and soul-searching and self-flagellation need to be undertaken if the republic is to survive, right? There must be a way to find common ground. (I really believe this, by the way.)”
He then unleashes a tantrum wholly incompatible with any sincere effort at outreach. “The entire Trump project was a scurrilous joke, of course. A parody of American political life and decline,” Klein bellowed. “[T]he joke was on us, the American people, especially those of us, the dreaded elite, who took things like, well, health care and pollution and education and overseas authoritarians such as [Russian President] Vladimir Putin seriously.”
Klein really likes using the word “serious” as a self-descriptor. And for good reason. It allows him to posit himself as “the adult in the room,” to borrow a phrase, and thus to brand Trump backers as the infantilized children they are in his mind.
Joe Klein (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for TIME)
“So the GOP lapsed into nihilism. Its leaders regurgitated Trump’s lies,” Klein continued. “They could be this brazen – they could almost get away with destroying American democracy – because a significant percentage of the American people, the folks that we ‘serious’ people keep trying to ‘understand,’ are too lazy and crass and bigoted to care.”
Ho-hum, the usual bilge. But the cherry on the tone-deaf sundae comes at the end, when the same man who just lashed out at the slack-jawed haters seamlessly resumes his “higher plane” posturing.
“Why can’t we be as angry at them as they are at us?” Klein wrote. “Because we know better. We know that if we don’t figure this out, we don’t have a country … [N]ow it’s time to search, once more, for our better angels, even if they’re drowned out by chants of ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ at the NASCAR races.”
The intensity of Klein’s animus is palpable, yet he remains mystified. Why can’t these yokels understand our stern disapproval and mend their ways? It’s enough to make a Swamp lizard burst out in tears.
