CDZ The Prediction Game: What will result from the Trump-Ryan meeting tomorrow?

[320 Years of History]

What are yours with regard to what we will see coming out of the Trump-Ryan meeting scheduled for 12-May-2016?

My Predictions:

• There will be some sort of nuanced or "spun" definition of what "unity" (or various versions of that word) means in terms of Mr. Ryan and Trump, or in terms of what "unity" should mean (for this election cycle at least) re: the greater GOP, the general public, and Trump, this election cycle, most likely something deriving from standard definition 2a below. Whatever it be that issues from the meeting, I expect it to provide some sort of "cover" for "down ticket" Republican candidates who want to support/endorse Trump.
• I predict that Mr. Ryan will offer a qualified endorsement/opinion of Trump whereby he attests to what he and Trump agree upon, and eschews directly answering questions pertaining to policy matters whereof they don't agree, assuming Mr. Ryan identifies any specific policy matters on which the two men agree.
• I predict that one or both men state additional conversations will be necessary before they arrive at some sort of comprehensive concord consistent with what "everyone" and "anyone" would typically consider to be "unity."
• This is not a prediction, but I suspect that if Mr. Ryan endorses Trump, it'll be based solely on the fact that Trump is and likely will be the GOP nominee, not based on overall agreement on ideas and principles re: the policy positions the nation/GOP should take in 2017 and beyond.
• And, what the heck, I'll go out on a limb and predict that Trump will announce that he will partially release selected years of his tax returns for years not under audit. They will most likely not be concurrent years and not those years for which there is information pertaining to financial claims he made in a legal matter that's already been resolved or that is ongoing.
  
  Actually, I think what's in his tax returns that he feels militates for him not releasing the returns is info that directly contradicts something(s) he attested to under oath. I think that because it's already been established that the man will say anything in order "to win," and I think that being under oath is not a limiting factor regarding that willingness. I doubt anyone actually gives a damn about his actual wealth position and I find it hard to believe he gives a damn about the whole world finding out precisely how rich he is. On the matter of his absolute wealth, the fact is he's vastly wealthier than most people, everybody thinks that and is fine with that, and that's really all that matters. I know that's how I see the question of "how wealthy is Donald Trump?"
  

Is it possible that Trump can convince Mr. Ryan that the GOP needs to become a hybrid party in the way Trump is a hybrid liberal+conservative. I don't think that'll happen, but it's certainly possible. What's clear is that Trump is not a "full on" conservative as is Mr. Ryan or, say, Michael Medved, or even in the sense William F. Buckley, Jr. was.

Off Topic Sidebar:

WFB Jr. was a Conservative I could easily support, even today, for the man believed what he said, and he had the integrity to unequivocally admit, when he was mistaken, that he was mistaken and move on. I have yet to see the like of him or his character among the "big names" in GOP today.​

End of sidebar.


Here are the definitions of "unity" Merriam-Webster provides:

Standard meanings:

• 1a : the quality or state of not being multiple : oneness
  1b (1) : a definite amount taken as one or for which 1 is made to stand in calculation <in a table of natural sines the radius of the circle is regarded as unity> (2) : identity element
  
  
• 2a : a condition of harmony : accord
  2b: continuity without deviation or change (as in purpose or action)
  
  
• 3a : the quality or state of being made one : unification
  3b : a combination or ordering of parts in a literary or artistic production that constitutes a whole or promotes an undivided total effect; also : the resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of style and character
  
  
• 4: a totality of related parts : an entity that is a complex or systematic whole
  
  
• 5: any of three principles of dramatic structure derived by French classicists from Aristotle's Poetics and requiring a play to have a single action represented as occurring in one place and within one day
  
  
• 6 capitalized : a 20th century American religious movement that emphasizes spiritual sources of health and prosperity
  

Legal meanings:

• 1: the quality or state of not being multiple : the quality or state of being one, single, whole, or the same <only if there is unity of ownership of the immovable and movables>
  
  
• 2: an aspect (as time, title, interest, or possession) of a joint tenancy that must be identical as it relates to the cotenants <such a conveyance severs the joint tenancy by removing theunities of time and title>
  
  
  

 

[william the wie]

The spin put out matters no one.When adjusted for maturity and tax exempt status blue Jurisdiction Munis are priced at considerably more than treasuries so they will go into default in the next presidential term. Ryan and McConnel know this so they don't want an R president elected this time around. The spin and possibly the meeting will not mention this. Suppressing D turnout to retain the house and senate is the only goal of this meeting.

 

[daws101]

Could Ryan ambiguous use of the candidate instead of using Trump's name a way to cover his ass if Trump loses the nomination at the convention?

 

[candycorn]

I predict they will make nice. It's in the best interest of Ryan and Trump to present a united front.

In truth, they will be no closer to being unified than they were 2 weeks ago but optically, being photographed together shaking hands is worth several thousand votes for Trump. He'll need every one of them so he will shake the hand. About 5 minutes after Hillary declares victory, he'll be calling Ryan names (if he waits that long).

 

[Zander]

Rino Ryan will end up doing what every other career politician does- he'll toss his phony "principles" out the window and endorse Trump.

He doesn't want to be "Cantored".

 

[william the wie]

Rino Ryan will end up doing what every other career politician does- he'll toss his phony "principles" out the window and endorse Trump.

He doesn't want to be "Cantored".[/QUOTE

True but he does want to make sure that when IL goes from its decades of non-bond default to universal default that there is no R in the White House.

Secondarily the partial and regional collapse of Obamacare needs at least 50 R senators and a majority of Rs in the house when it becomes obvious as in MS where less than 1% of the population can afford Ocare despite a poverty rate of nearly 50% and subsidy availability.

Achieving both of those goals will be difficult

 

[320 Years of History]

Could Ryan ambiguous use of the candidate instead of using Trump's name a way to cover his ass if Trump loses the nomination at the convention?

No, because at this time, the time he'd do so, everyone knows that Trump is the presumptive nominee. Use his name explicitly or not, there's nobody else he could mean at this point in time, unless he knows something about how the GOP convention will go that has not been made public.

 

[Elvis Obama]

What are yours with regard to what we will see coming out of the Trump-Ryan meeting scheduled for 12-May-2016?

My Predictions:

• There will be some sort of nuanced or "spun" definition of what "unity" (or various versions of that word) means in terms of Mr. Ryan and Trump, or in terms of what "unity" should mean (for this election cycle at least) re: the greater GOP, the general public, and Trump, this election cycle, most likely something deriving from standard definition 2a below. Whatever it be that issues from the meeting, I expect it to provide some sort of "cover" for "down ticket" Republican candidates who want to support/endorse Trump.
• I predict that Mr. Ryan will offer a qualified endorsement/opinion of Trump whereby he attests to what he and Trump agree upon, and eschews directly answering questions pertaining to policy matters whereof they don't agree, assuming Mr. Ryan identifies any specific policy matters on which the two men agree.
• I predict that one or both men state additional conversations will be necessary before they arrive at some sort of comprehensive concord consistent with what "everyone" and "anyone" would typically consider to be "unity."
• This is not a prediction, but I suspect that if Mr. Ryan endorses Trump, it'll be based solely on the fact that Trump is and likely will be the GOP nominee, not based on overall agreement on ideas and principles re: the policy positions the nation/GOP should take in 2017 and beyond.
• And, what the heck, I'll go out on a limb and predict that Trump will announce that he will partially release selected years of his tax returns for years not under audit. They will most likely not be concurrent years and not those years for which there is information pertaining to financial claims he made in a legal matter that's already been resolved or that is ongoing.
  
  Actually, I think what's in his tax returns that he feels militates for him not releasing the returns is info that directly contradicts something(s) he attested to under oath. I think that because it's already been established that the man will say anything in order "to win," and I think that being under oath is not a limiting factor regarding that willingness. I doubt anyone actually gives a damn about his actual wealth position and I find it hard to believe he gives a damn about the whole world finding out precisely how rich he is. On the matter of his absolute wealth, the fact is he's vastly wealthier than most people, everybody thinks that and is fine with that, and that's really all that matters. I know that's how I see the question of "how wealthy is Donald Trump?"

Is it possible that Trump can convince Mr. Ryan that the GOP needs to become a hybrid party in the way Trump is a hybrid liberal+conservative. I don't think that'll happen, but it's certainly possible. What's clear is that Trump is not a "full on" conservative as is Mr. Ryan or, say, Michael Medved, or even in the sense William F. Buckley, Jr. was.

Off Topic Sidebar:

WFB Jr. was a Conservative I could easily support, even today, for the man believed what he said, and he had the integrity to unequivocally admit, when he was mistaken, that he was mistaken and move on. I have yet to see the like of him or his character among the "big names" in GOP today.​

End of sidebar.


Here are the definitions of "unity" Merriam-Webster provides:

Standard meanings:

• 1a : the quality or state of not being multiple : oneness
  1b (1) : a definite amount taken as one or for which 1 is made to stand in calculation <in a table of natural sines the radius of the circle is regarded as unity> (2) : identity element
  
  
• 2a : a condition of harmony : accord
  2b: continuity without deviation or change (as in purpose or action)
  
  
• 3a : the quality or state of being made one : unification
  3b : a combination or ordering of parts in a literary or artistic production that constitutes a whole or promotes an undivided total effect; also : the resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of style and character
  
  
• 4: a totality of related parts : an entity that is a complex or systematic whole
  
  
• 5: any of three principles of dramatic structure derived by French classicists from Aristotle's Poetics and requiring a play to have a single action represented as occurring in one place and within one day
  
  
• 6 capitalized : a 20th century American religious movement that emphasizes spiritual sources of health and prosperity

Legal meanings:

• 1: the quality or state of not being multiple : the quality or state of being one, single, whole, or the same <only if there is unity of ownership of the immovable and movables>
  
  
• 2: an aspect (as time, title, interest, or possession) of a joint tenancy that must be identical as it relates to the cotenants <such a conveyance severs the joint tenancy by removing theunities of time and title>

Wow, Mr. Ryan's calculations. Oh to be a fly on the wall in his conference room, where he is trying to figure out how to approach this astonishing monster that has manifested itself in his doorway.

1- How can he ignore problem #1, which is not Donald Trump? The Republican electorate is angry. Steam shooting out of their ears, cartoon smokestacks rising from the tops of their heads angry. Angry enough to add the Republican establishment (and their poster boy, Paul Ryan) to the list of their other enemies, like liberals, the lamestream media, Queen Cersei, etc., so how does Prince Paul ignore the rumblings of the villagers? He's got to embrace Trump, albeit with reservations and qualifications similar to those being expressed by John McCain and the other "down balloteers", singing their song of drivel and double talk.

2- Conservatism is dead? Can Paul Ryan embrace the Trump re-definition of conservatism? The Republican electorate has made it clear that they don't care about the principles which Paul Ryan has made the backbone of his career. How much of that backbone can he abandon without abandoning his post-Trump future (which could be no farther ahead than November, if Trump loses to Hillary). How does conservative leader Ryan try to reconstitute conservatism?

3- Crass, gross, misogynistic, xenophobic hate mongering. That's not Ryan's style. He's more of an orange juice commercial. How much oppo research can he afford to create about himself in his embrace of Trump? Does this seem like a guy that wants to be associated too closely with the Trump brand?



No, he seems a bit too image conscious to abandon everything he's worked to build for himself. His problem is how to salvage as much of what he's built as possible in the face of this impending disaster for himself and his party. He really has no good options.

Trump's taxes! Unleash the forensic accountants!! Who knows what lurks in that trash heap?

Standing athwart history yelling stop. Seems kind of pointless, doesn't it?​

 

[320 Years of History]

So coming out of the meeting:

• Ryan: more meetings needed; Trump's a nice guy. We talked about our differences, but the question is what we need to do to unify the GOP.
• Priebus: "radio silence" without being actually silent
• Trump: Surprisingly, he's had nothing to say, yet, presumably because he's talking to Senate Republicans.
• Trump + Ryan joint statement: Many areas of common ground; we'll chat again; there's opportunity to unify our party and win in the fall; we both want the party unified and we both want to win in the fall.

Hmm....hardly seems different that "politics as usual;" opacity, evasiveness and uncertainty coming from all three key players. My read on that: the men talked and nothing's substantively different on the policy/platform front. "The question is what we need to do to unify the Republican Party" says to me the two men realize they probably won't end up agreeing, but they will together craft an approach that will allow them to ignore their individual differences while at the same time unifying the rest of the GOP.

 

[GaryDog]

Ryan will eventually back Trump. He has to.

It's funny how in about 7 years Ryan became a "moderate" politician, because forcing women to give birth to rape-babies is a "moderate" position in the GOP.

 

[320 Years of History]

Ryan will eventually back Trump. He has to.

It's funny how in about 7 years Ryan became a "moderate" politician, because forcing women to give birth to rape-babies is a "moderate" position in the GOP.

I don't think he has to any more than you, I and other voters have to. I see Mr. Ryan as a man of greater character than Trump, and to that end, I think he'll work to minimize the negative impact on "down ticket" Republicans because as Speaker, that's his job, but I'm not so sure Mr. Ryan, the man, is willing to move left, left enough to align with Trump's positions.

Quite frankly, Trump really can't move, nor does he want to, nor does he perceive why he should. All those people who voted for him, even though they don't comprise a majority of the GOP, would (should) be pissed as hell if he backtracks/"pivots" on all his campaign claims.

I think Trump's actions may result in remaking the GOP into a more socially liberal party re: Americans and a more socially conservative (bigoted in the style of the 1960s & '70s, which makes sense as he was in his 20s & 30s during those years; and whose ideal vision of "things" doesn't come from that period in their life?) party with regard to non-Americans, and Mr. Ryan and the rest of the very right wing of the party are resisting that change.

 

[GaryDog]

I feel like Ryan would completely trash the GOP brand if he didn't come out in support of Trump, at least somewhat ("While we part ways on some issues, I believe Mr. Trump is on balance the best candidate, yadda yadda"). Like you said, down-ticket republicans would suffer, and maybe Ryan himself (though Trump lost Wisconsin, so who knows...)

 

[Elvis Obama]

Trump is already backing away from his primary insanity, calling the absolute statement he made about banning Muslims "a suggestion". His tax proposals are all over the place, as is his ideas about abortion. All he's done throughout the primaries is spew the most hateful things he can, and it seemed to work, so he did it some more. Now that he's the nominee he thinks he can pivot 180 degrees and not lose support. He's "shooting people" left and right now, and will continue to do so. We'll see whether his boast that nothing he does could cost him support proves true. The question remains the same as it was at the beginning, just how stupid are we? The question for politicians remains the same, how can we keep as much of our power/brand intact as we possibly can in the face of this disaster? Trump will push them for unequivocal capitulation, and will doubtless spin this meeting in a completely different way than any of the others will.

 

[320 Years of History]

Ryan would completely trash the GOP brand if he didn't come out in support of Trump, at least somewhat

Hmmm...."completely trash....somewhat." LOL

Fortunately, I've raised three kids, so I totally understand a little bit what that means. LOL

[jus' messin' witcha...]

down-ticket republicans would suffer, and maybe Ryan himself

I doubt Mr. Ryan will suffer much. Who's going to inflict the suffering? His district's voters would be idiots to not re-elect him; having one's very own Representative also be the Speaker of the House is a pretty good thing, ven if one doesn't agree with the person's specific policy positions. Moreover, his approval rating is 75%, so they are unlikely to do so anyway.

 

[320 Years of History]

I don't know if the rest of you have noticed, but Trump is conspicuously quiet regarding the meeting he had with Mr. Ryan. I can't say when last Trump had nothing of note to say about anything.

 

[320 Years of History]

Additional observations...

• For as often as the word "unite" (or forms of it) appeared in the respective remarks made, the operative word that indicates an actual change in view, "endorse" remained absent.
• People, including Mr. Ryan, have been saying how he only interacted briefly with Trump via a phone call some time back. And that's relevant how? Do you actually think anything like the majority of the ~10M Republican primary voters who voted for Trump spoke to him one-on-one at any time in their lives? I don't think so, yet they voted for him. So not having met Trump is a lame excuse.
• A few prominent GOP officials have noted that Trump is a likeable fellow. Well, duh, nobody thinks the man isn't likeable. His cordiality in person isn't the problem. What he thinks, the instances where he fails to think through things comprehensively, his wishy-washiness on policy, and his lack of integrity are the problems.
  
  Go get yourself a pet raccoon. It'll be very likeable for about a year. Then it'll become your worst nightmare. There's no such thing as a politician or would be politician who is incapable of being highly likeable in the span of a few minutes to a few hours. Half of their stock in trade derives from merely being likeable.
  
  Did you happen to see the KKK episode of United Shades of America? Heck, even those hood wearing bigots came across as likeable. It's a major mental mistake to misconstrue civility and cordiality for anything other those two things. They are what they are, and what they are is good, but those behaviors are not anything other than what they are. They are not surrogates for intellectual acuity, comprehensive analysis, or thoughtful expression, nor are they indicators of magnanimity, sophistication, kindness, generosity, or integrity.

 

[GaryDog]

Ryan would completely trash the GOP brand if he didn't come out in support of Trump, at least somewhat

Hmmm...."completely trash....somewhat." LOL

Fortunately, I've raised three kids, so I totally understand a little bit what that means. LOL

[jus' messin' witcha...]

down-ticket republicans would suffer, and maybe Ryan himself

I doubt Mr. Ryan will suffer much. Who's going to inflict the suffering? His district's voters would be idiots to not re-elect him; having one's very own Representative also be the Speaker of the House is a pretty good thing, ven if one doesn't agree with the person's specific policy positions. Moreover, his approval rating is 75%, so they are unlikely to do so anyway.

lmao, you caught me.

 

[320 Years of History]

Ryan would completely trash the GOP brand if he didn't come out in support of Trump, at least somewhat

Hmmm...."completely trash....somewhat." LOL

Fortunately, I've raised three kids, so I totally understand a little bit what that means. LOL

[jus' messin' witcha...]

down-ticket republicans would suffer, and maybe Ryan himself

I doubt Mr. Ryan will suffer much. Who's going to inflict the suffering? His district's voters would be idiots to not re-elect him; having one's very own Representative also be the Speaker of the House is a pretty good thing, ven if one doesn't agree with the person's specific policy positions. Moreover, his approval rating is 75%, so they are unlikely to do so anyway.

lmao, you caught me.

Chuckling with you not at you.