Paul Ryan

[All Along The Watchtower]

Well?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Nominating him would be the dumbest thing the GOP can do.

[7,052,770]

Switching to Ryan would be a smart move for the Republican elites. Obviously he loses to Hillary, but it's a tactical surrender that keeps them in control of the party. Trump and Cruz lose by bigger margins, drag Congress down with them, and fundamentally change the party.

[Figueira]

Nominating him would be the dumbest thing the GOP can do.

It's not like there are any smart things they can do.

[President Johnson]

Nominating him would be the dumbest thing the GOP can do.

Yeah. But he would do better in the fall election than Cruz.

[Blair]

There's been a lot of briefing about it in the last week

[Virginiá]

They are going to lose anyway, so they might as well nominate Cruz so they don't help alienate his supporters in addition to Trump's. Ryan would start a general election campaign with nothing. He would have only a few months to raise truly enormous amounts of cash - Most of which no doubt would go to a Super PAC, which the GOP has shown to be ineffective with this cycle. He would have no campaign infrastructure of his own and would be going up against the massive, well-funded Clinton machine. Nominating Ryan would be like sending the lamb to the slaughter, and I really wonder if Mr. Ryan wants to partake in that. Kasich would probably be only marginally better than Ryan in regards to resources/infrastructure and his poll numbers won't last a sustained negative ad campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

If they are going to deny Trump the nomination, they might as well pick Cruz. They are probably going to lose the Senate regardless, and Cruz most likely (??) won't cost them the House, so why not? I think it would be better for their image if they picked the 2nd place candidate, and not a candidate that only won 1 state and a lot less votes in comparison, much less a person who didn't even run at all.