Pam's Points: Ask Ryan and Trump, 'Who's your devil?'

Protesters organized by the National Organization for Women gather near the Trump International Hotel and Tower on last week in New York. Hillary Clinton is pressing Republicans to take a clear stand on Donald Trump as she tries to capitalize on GOP divisions since revelation of his predatory comments about women prompted party leaders to abandon him. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Protesters organized by the National Organization for Women gather near the Trump International Hotel and Tower on last week in New York. Hillary Clinton is pressing Republicans to take a clear stand on Donald Trump as she tries to capitalize on GOP divisions since revelation of his predatory comments about women prompted party leaders to abandon him. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
photo Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the South Florida Fairgrounds and Convention Center last week in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Paul Ryan's lost cause

Republicans reeling from the onslaught of women finally empowered to tell their Trump-groped-me stories are trying to turn the conversation to "issues."

Pardon us while we laugh.

This from the same party whose nominee is the king of dog whistles and Vladimir Putin worship. The one who calls the Democratic nominee the "devil" whom he would put "in jail."

But on Friday, there was Paul Ryan in Madison, Wis., seeking to frame the election as a "debate between two governing philosophies."

"Beneath all the ugliness lies a long-running debate between two governing philosophies: one that is in keeping with our nation's founding principles - like freedom and equality - and another that seeks to replace them," Ryan said.

Wait. The GOP is in keeping with freedom and equality, and the other "seeks to replace" freedom and equality?"

Ryan might as well have called it a battle between good and evil. He just didn't say Dems are "the devil."

But instead of taking the opportunity to note that as Americans, no matter what our party, we all want freedom and equality, he went on to intimate that the replacement would be "an arrogant, condescending and paternalistic reality."

Speaker Ryan: Would that be like the arrogant, condescending and brutish behavior of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed groper, who also faces allegations from women that he walked into the dressing rooms of teen and women beauty pageant contestants to ogle them naked and near-naked - just as he told radio interviewers he did years ago? Where was their freedom and equality?

Would that be still "another" replacement that is the same arrogant, condescending and paternalistic reality of Donald Trump who turned even against Ryan himself? Why, just days ago, Trump called the GOP feckless and tweeted "Disloyal R's are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don't know how to win - I will teach them!"

No wonder Ryan is fighting to change the subject.

As the polls are stacking up right now, the most likely scenario in 22 days is that Speaker Ryan's House of Representatives loses from 10 to 20 GOP seats on Election Day, but maintains a slimmed-down majority. That will make Ryan's job even trickier than it already is.

Assuming that Ryan gets enough votes to remain speaker in the next Congress, he would retain charge of a smaller majority, which would force him to completely own any deals he cuts with a Clinton White House and that, in turn, would complicate his own political future. Moreover, the rabble-rousing Freedom Caucus, which already has given Ryan heartburn, would make up a larger percentage of his charge and push the House GOP to the right as the rest of Washington edges left. Then there's also the science of group and political negotiation dynamics: When House Republicans don't fall in line behind their leader, Democrats get a leg up.

That would be, Speaker Ryan, a leg up for another view of "freedom and equality."

So what about Bill Clinton?

Politico reported Thursday that since Hillary Clinton launched her own political career in 1999, Republican operatives have been polling and focus-grouping specific attacks about Bill Clinton's sex scandals, hunting for story lines to potentially damage her.

"They have never worked," according to Politico.

Rick Wilson, the GOP strategist on Rudy Giuliani's brief New York Senate bid in 2000, told Politico that he hired pollster Frank Luntz to test voter responses to information about the president's history of extramarital affairs.

"It was terrible," recalled Wilson. "It made Hillary Clinton more human, more relatable, more sympathetic - we found that you can't come at the problem the right way."

Wilson said he again polled a question about Bill Clinton's affairs during the 2008 presidential election, when he was working for a right wing PAC. His pollster put the subject out in the field among independent women in Florida, Missouri and Virginia, among other states. "It did not move the numbers at all," Wilson told Politico.

The magazine said the question was again floated by the GOP in 2014, when the right wing America Rising PAC hired a strategist to conduct focus groups testing the Bill Clinton sex scandals - including Hillary Clinton's role in allegedly "enabling" her husband, or threatening the "other" women.

Politico writes that the feedback was simple: "Try anything but."

Politico questions and articles aside - Bill Clinton is not running for president.

Hillary Clinton is on the ballot.

Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and any other aging white guys who are feeling threatened need to get that.

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