WASHINGTON (AP) — The country’s two top Republicans emerged from a meeting Thursday pledging to work toward unity. But virtual GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan remain at odds over many issues that have defined conservatism for years.
On immigration, federal spending, trade and foreign affairs, the GOP’s likely candidate for president and its highest-ranking government official diverge on major issues. The meeting Thursday was an illustration of just how wide the gulf is, pairing in the same room a sober, policy-driven, consensus-seeking conservative and a crowd-rousing improviser with indistinct ideology and only a handful of core issues.
Some contours of the chasm between them:
SPENDING
In December, after Ryan negotiated a plan to ease automatic spending curbs on the Pentagon and domestic agencies, Trump blasted him and other GOP leaders, saying, “The elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget discipline.”
Trump presents himself as a guardian of Social Security and Medicare even as other Republicans, Ryan chief among them, see no choice but to restrain their cost. “He represented cutting entitlements,” Trump said this year, recalling Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012. “That was the end of the campaign. I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.'”
Trump says he can save Social Security by growing the economy, with no increases in the retirement age and or other scale-backs, a contention disputed by many economists.
In Trump’s view, Ryan hasn’t done right by the country for some years. As a budget leader before he became speaker, Ryan was the driving force behind attempts to control the debt, a mission he still embodies. His 2011 budget plan, heavy with spending cuts and a Medicare overhaul, earned Trump’s scorn. “If anyone needs more evidence of why the American people are suffering at the hands of their own government, look no further than the budget deal announced by Speaker Ryan,” he said at the time.
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TRADE
Ryan is a leading advocate for free trade and his support for deals negotiated by the Obama administration with Pacific nations and other partners is distinctly at odds with Trump’s vow to dismantle or renegotiate such agreements.
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IMMIGRATION AND ISLAM
Silent on the Republican presidential race for months, Ryan finally was moved to speak out when Trump proposed banning foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. until the security of Americans could be assured.
“Freedom of religion is a fundamental constitutional principle; it is a founding principle of this country,” Ryan said in response. Trump’s plan “is not what this party stands for, and more importantly it’s not what this country stands for.”
More broadly, Ryan embraced a path to legal status for people in the country illegally, stepping back from previous support for “a path to earned citizenship.” He’s said he could not imagine how Trump could achieve his plan for the mass deportation of the 11 million people in the country illegally, then the re-entry of the “good ones” through a “giant door” in his Mexico border wall.
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AMERICA ABROAD
Ryan supports an activist foreign policy, not a “fortress America,” while Trump’s “America First” campaign suggests a retrenchment and a questionable commitment to traditional allies. Ryan has dismissed the notion the U.S. could retreat, as reflected by Trump’s demand that allies pay more or America will step back from protecting them.
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PLANNED PARENTOOD
Ryan has supported stripping federal money from Planned Parenthood because of its abortion services. Trump, while criticizing those abortion practices, said the organization does good work for women on other fronts and those parts of its mission should continue to get federal money. He later qualified the remark to suggest the group should not get federal support as long as it provides abortions, while reaffirming his view that “Planned Parenthood has done very good work for millions of women.”
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HILLARY CLINTON
On some issues, each is closer to Hillary Clinton than to the other. But their common wish to deny her the White House will be a key reason they come together, if they do.
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Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Jill Colvin and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.