Write an article with the title: "No Paul Ryan Means Still More Anger"
Republican voters “are not interested in someone who’s embedded in the party’s leadership, they’re not interested in someone who is donor friendly, and who’s soft on immigration,” Lowry declared on “Meet the Press” on April 10. “It would be one thing if Ryan was a compromise between Cruz and Trump. He’s a rejection of both of them and of 70 percent of Republican voters.”

Another conservative adamantly opposed to Trump is Glenn Beck. Appearing on the same show as Lowry, Beck said:

I think a Trump nomination would be disastrous. With that being said, you can’t disenfranchise people. If Trump wins the 1,237 or wins in the first, second, third ballot, it must go to him. And it can’t go to dirty politics.

In order for any white knight to have a chance of ending up with a draft nomination, the first ballot at the Republican convention in Cleveland would have to be inconclusive — with neither Trump nor Cruz winning a majority of the 2,472 delegates.

In subsequent balloting, in order to get another candidate’s name placed in nomination under current party rule 40b — “Each candidate for nomination for President of the United States and Vice President of the United States shall demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight (8) or more states, severally, before the presentation of the name of that candidate for nomination” — supporters of a player to be named later would need signed petitions from a majority of delegates in eight states, which is no easy task because many (although not all) delegates are committed to one of the candidates who ran in the primaries.

A factor suggesting that Ryan’s Shermanesque statement may be subject to revision is the way he repeatedly rejected pleas to run for House speaker last October, before he turned around and accepted the post. On Tuesday, Ryan dismissed the analogy as comparing “apples and oranges.”

As recently as April 7, Ryan had fueled discussion that he was interested in a presidential bid by posting a video that for all intents and purposes looks like a presidential campaign commercial. The video shows Ryan speaking to House interns, with musical crescendos and shots taken from at least six different camera angles.

Giving sustenance to those who persist in pinning their hopes on a last minute Ryan draft is the speaker’s own message, which could easily form the foundation of a reluctant acceptance speech in Cleveland:

What really bothers me the most about politics these days is this notion of identity politics: that we’re going to win an election by dividing people, rather than inspiring people on our common humanity and our common ideals and our common culture on the things that should unify us. We all want to be prosperous. We all want to be healthy. We want everybody to succeed. We want people to reach their potential in their lives.

Now, liberals and conservatives are going to disagree with one another on that. No problem. That’s what this is all about. So let’s have a battle of ideas. Let’s have a contest of whose ideas are better and why our ideas are better.

Speculation about a Ryan candidacy had been intensely worrisome to Democrats, which is why his disavowal on Tuesday was such welcome news in Democratic precincts.

Take Peter Hart, the dean of Democratic pollsters, who has been running a series of voter focus groups for the Annenberg Public Policy Center. If the 2016 presidential election “were a Clinton-Ryan race,” he said, before Ryan’s latest announcement, “you would have to say Ryan would be the favorite.” As Hart put it later, “this field is not satisfactory to the voters. Voters are looking for a choice other than Hillary Clinton.”

In a background conversation, a source who is intimately familiar with the inner workings of the Clinton campaign — and who insisted on anonymity in order to be able to discuss the prospect of a Clinton-Ryan election candidly — was blunt: “Ryan would kill her.”

Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the AFL-CIO and now head of the Democratic consulting firm the Organizing Group, argued that the divisive primary campaign between Trump and Cruz has set the stage for an alternative candidate like Ryan, even if it won’t be him: “Anybody who comes along now projecting a more moderate image will be viewed as a savior.”

Republicans continue to exhibit extraordinary division over who their best nominee might be, particularly for April of a presidential election year. This conflict plays out across intraparty boundaries but often occurs within individuals, too. No one illustrates these internal contradictions more colorfully than Alex Castellanos, a media consultant. Castellanos worked on behalf of such candidates as Bob Dole, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. Most famously (or notoriously), he produced the “white hands” ad for Senator Jesse Helms in 1990, when Helms was running for re-election against Harvey Gantt, the black mayor of Charlotte.

Six weeks ago, Castellanos wrote:

Trump has earned the nomination. He won it, fair and square, and we should respect that. Donald Trump whipped the establishment and it is too late for the limp G.O.P. establishment to ask their mommy to step in and rewrite the rules because they were humiliated for their impotence.

On April 3, Castellanos thought better of his earlier assessment and produced a sharp critique of all the remaining Republican candidates:

If Mr. Trump is one hundred or more votes away from the nomination, it is unlikely he can find the delegates to get the ball in the end zone on the first ballot. He will turn the ball over on downs though nearly at the goal line. On the second ballot, he drops 200 or 300 votes or more and starts bleeding. Ultimately, he bleeds to death on the convention floor — which you think would be good news for the candidate in second place, Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) unless, of course, you’ve met Senator Ted Cruz.

Castellanos was particularly dismissive of Cruz:

Senator Cruz has no value beyond being an alternative to Donald Trump. If Trump collapses, the need for Ted Cruz evaporates, so Cruz is at risk of collapsing, too. Senator Cruz is the unpleasant medicine the Republican Party is willing to swallow when it is sick, but not when it is feeling healthier. As Donald Trump backs out of the convention hall, Cruz is likely to get a run but then fall short, which gives John Kasich his moment.

Then Castellanos wound things up with a pitch for an alternative to those currently running: “Why not wipe the slate clean and go for what delegates really want,” someone who comes in unsullied by the primary battle.

If no dark horse Republican candidate emerges and if Bernie Sanders does not catch up to Hillary Clinton, the election will feature either Clinton vs. Trump or Clinton vs. Cruz. In that case, the next president is likely to win not because he or she is the most loved, but because he or she is the least hated.