What is it about the GOP establishment in Congress? They simply do not understand that ordinary Americans have rejected their decades-long weak capitulations to Democrats. The people did this by electing President Donald J. Trump, a Republican nationalist.

“It’s great that he’s coming and I think he feels a sense of civic duty,” said outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan regarding Mitt Romney’s election to the U.S. Senate. “I think with John McCain passing, for example, Mitt believes that there’s a role for him in our party in being you know a statesman and a standard-bearer in our party.”

Ryan spoke with the Washington Post on Thursday

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Ryan and Romney ran together on a losing presidential ticket against former president Barack H. Obama and vice president Joseph R. Biden in 2012. The pair literally stopped campaigning during the last two weeks of the election cycle, handing the race to the Democrats. Romney was recently elected to the Senate in Utah.

Ryan has become known as a do-nothing during his time in Congress, and Romney’s biggest win in politics was bringing universal healthcare to the state of Massachusetts when he was Governor there.

“I would look to him as a leader who will be a standard-bearer of our principles,” Ryan repeated in the interview.

What exactly are “our” principles? Calling ourselves conservatives whilst failing to conserve anything? Pretending that we oppose leftist ideals but caving to them anyway and playing golf with them in the Hamptons on the weekends? Or do we believe in closed borders, small and honest government, the rule of law, the right to life and American exceptionalism?

One faction of the Republican party – Trump’s GOP – is working to bring us the latter. Ryan and Romney’s faction will only ever deliver the former. But by all means, let’s let Mitt be the “standard-bearer.”

Spineless Ryan criticized Republicans for “tribalism,” which, to ordinary Americans, is simply fighting for what we believe in instead of rolling over to liberals at every turn.

“It’s a little bit of a two-way street,” Ryan said. “The tribalism is just getting out of control and I see…the 21^st century business model of getting hits and clicks and eyeballs on cable news, on websites has created this incentive structure and marketplace where polarization sells.”