Rock Island Today

American Principles Project President Terry Schilling is no fan of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library speech delivered by former House Speaker Paul Ryan blasting former president Donald Trump and urging Republican voters to walk away from him.  

“Paul Ryan is a nice family man, but he was a wholly incompetent steward of the conservative movement and, more broadly, the national interest,” Schilling said  in a statement  “Trained to appease others and influenced by globalist interests, he spent more time furnishing a slick coif than a solid backbone. To avoid conflict at all cost, he ceaselessly ceded ground to the Left, regularly calling for unilateral truces on cultural, economic, and family issues.”

Schilling added he holds Ryan as responsible as anyone for the "progressive radicalism  that our country is now forced to confront."

“Ryan was uninterested in recognizing — let alone fighting — identity politics, moral nihilism, and the resurgence of socialism, even when multitudes of conservatives were shouting in his ear to pay attention,” he said. “During Ryan’s political tenure, America was debating the merits of gay marriage. Today, we have transgender toddlers. Ryan’s economic agenda, which entailed slashing social programs for retirees to further enrich corporations, was craven and disastrous for the middle class.”

Ryan’s recent critique of Trump also called on GOP voters to focus more on principles than personalities like the former president. Schiiling said he’s far more bothered by rumblings Ryan is now planning his own political comeback.

“The fact that Paul Ryan is trying to make a comeback today proves once and for all that his aloofness was not a sporadic spasm, but rather an indelible characteristic,” he said. There hasn’t been an attempted rally this pathetic in Washington since Michael Jordan came out of retirement to play for the Wizards. Paul, American conservatism moved on from you years ago. Please, finally get the message, and just enjoy retirement.”