Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin writes in her latest column that House Speaker Paul Ryan must “recover his soul” by pushing an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens and by stopping President Trump’s pro-American worker tariffs.
Rubin writes that Ryan should follow through on his Koch brothers-aligned agenda of mass immigration and multinational free trade agreements:
There is no reason Ryan, who claims to be a pro-immigration, pro-free trade Republican and a “constitutional conservative,” could not address all three of these issues. (If a Democrat were in the White House, he almost certainly would protect a special prosecutor and free trade.) If he undertakes these initiatives, he could regain the respect of principled conservatives, rescue his legacy (in part) and be remembered for something other than running up the debt and enabling a protectionist, anti-immigration president who set news lows for fidelity to the Constitution. [Emphasis added]
So what’s stopping him?
Already, Ryan has committed to at least one of these goals set out by Rubin and the Republican establishment. As Breitbart News reported, pushing amnesty for illegal aliens will remain one of Ryan’s biggest priorities in his final months in office.
On trade, Ryan has signaled his opposition to Trump’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum — both designed to rebuild America’s manufacturing base and boost U.S. jobs.
When Trump announced his tariffs, Ryan immediately opposed the plan, denouncing it by saying he was “extremely worried” about a mainstream media-hyped “trade war.”
Ryan’s constituents in Wisconsin, though, have been opposed to the House Speaker’s free trade as religion, with a majority telling pollsters in 2016 that free trade was responsible for taking U.S. jobs away from them. The poll revealed that only 33 percent of Republican voters said free trade creates jobs in the U.S.
The ideologically globalist wing of the GOP has been successful in making sure tax reform came before any of Trump’s populist legislative iniatives, like reducing immigration or investing in infrastructure.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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