Can’t lefty pundits at least wait until after the election to go all squishy on Paul Ryan?

Apparently not. After acknowledging that Ryan’s whole policy intellectual/compassionate conservative/deficit scold schtick is fundamentally dishonest (he also has a habit of telling absurdly transparent lies about his putative feats of strength), Kevin Drum decides that Ryan’s current baby-splitting routine viz. Donald Trump is a profile in political courage:

That said, I confess to sympathizing with him over Donald Trump. He’s taken a lot of crap from liberals over his hypocrisy in refusing to defend Trump but continuing to endorse him. But what can he realistically do? As he made clear months ago, he’s a leader of the Republican Party. He really has no choice but to endorse the party’s presidential candidate.

So why did he make such a point of abandoning Trump on Monday even though—as Lowry points out—he didn’t really say anything new? I think the reason Ryan spoke up is simple: He may not feel that his position allows him to officially unendorse Trump, but he wanted to make it clear that, in practice, he doesn’t endorse Trump. Lowry believes this was not helpful to Ryan, and I think he’s right about that. What’s more, I’m quite sure Ryan is keenly aware of it. Martin Longman thinks it might cost Ryan the speakership.

In other words, at considerable risk to his own career, Ryan felt like he had to make it clear how disgusted he was by Trump. I have nothing but respect for that. He didn’t have to do it. No one would ever have noticed if he hadn’t. But Ryan has enough of a conscience that he couldn’t stay silent. Kudos to him for that.

Personally I don’t think the electron microscope has yet been built that can locate Paul Ryan’s conscience, but in any case you can bet your bottom bitcoin that after Trump gets trampled it’s going to turn out that Paul Ryan never really supported him at all, as he’ll be more than happy to remind a credulous and amnesiac media, in their unending search for Bigfoot reasonable Republican leaders of conscience and integritude.

Yeech.