Paul Ryan

Source: Bogstock

The Chicago convention, a Nixon convention, believed itself betrayed by the “Pact of Fifth Avenue.”

Only the appearance of Sen. Barry Goldwater at the podium to tell conservatives to “grow up. We can take this party back,” halted a suicidal drive to take the nomination away from Nixon.

After Goldwater won the nomination in the 1964 California primary by defeating Rockefeller, Rocky arrived at the San Francisco convention to demand that a plank equating the John Birch Society with the Communist Party and Ku Klux Klan be written into Goldwater’s platform. Hooted and rejected, Rocky went home and refused to endorse the nominee, who went down to a crushing defeat by LBJ.

Nixon, a party loyalist, campaigned across the country for Barry and his doomed party.

In 1968, Nixon got his reward, the nomination, with Goldwater’s support. And Govs. Rockefeller and George Romney, who had done the Paul Ryan thing, never came close.

Rockefeller got what he deserved when the Reaganite heirs of Barry Goldwater, at Kansas City in 1976, demanded the dumping of Rocky from President Ford’s ticket. And they got it.

Paul Ryan, in declaring that he cannot now support Trump, and imposing conditions to earn his support, has crawled out on a long limb.

Trump cannot capitulate. He has to saw it off.

This is one Private Ryan we cannot save.