Ryan retirement leaves Nazi as leading GOP candidate in Wisconsin race

Paul Ryan’s sudden retirement announcement means that a Nazi is currently the Republican Party’s leading candidate for Wisconsin’s First Congressional District.

Paul Nehlen has been running in the Republican primary in Wisconsin and attracting attention for a litany of racist and anti-Semitic statements.

He greeted the news of Ryan’s announcement as “good news for America,” promising to “warrior on” as a candidate. Nehlen’s website crashed after the Ryan news, perhaps indicating Republican interest in his campaign, despite his bigotry.

In 2016, Trump praised Nehlen during his primary challenge to Ryan. While that campaign was unsuccessful, Nehlen has continued to campaign in the Republican primary, and reflecting Trump’s racism, has further embraced bigotry in his campaign.

He was banned from Twitter after he posted a photo comparing actress Meghan Markle (who is biracial and engaged to England’s Prince Harry) to a prehistoric man.

That followed an appearance he made on former klansman and Trump supporter David Duke’s radio show, where he proclaimed that “Jews control the media.”

In an exchange with a reporter, Nehlen described himself as “pro-white.”

After the Twitter ban, Nehlen moved to Gab, the social media site used by many white supremacists. On that service he shared racist memes with the slogan “it’s okay to be white.”

Writing about immigration he complained that congressional leaders want to “replace American whites with anti-white substandard foreign” workers.

Ryan touted that he was reading the anti-Semitic book “The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements.” The Southern Poverty Law Center explains that the book “is part of a trilogy that blames Jews for introducing evil social vices and other perversions into Nordic society and portrayed them as degenerates preying on unsuspecting, wholesome Aryans.”

Nehlen’s embrace of bigotry was so blatant that even the Wisconsin Republican Party and the white supremacists at Breitbart have distanced themselves from him.

Robin Vos, the Republican state assembly speaker in Wisconsin, said of Nehlen “it looks to me like he’s a racist bigot.”

Breitbart pulled the interviews it has done with Nehlen and removed articles they published supporting him.

But the Wisconsin State Journal reports that Nehlen has paid dues to the Republican Party in Racine, Walworth, and Kenosha counties in that state.

He told that paper he considers himself a Republican, writing, “I am a member of the Republican Party regardless of what their traitorous, spineless apparatchiks believe.”

He added, “Not only does my America First agenda have a place in the Republican Party, it ought to be the centerpiece of the Republican Party.”

The Republican Party is in trouble. Thanks in large part to its association with Trump and refusal to hold him accountable, the party faces the prospect of losing many seats. Ryan’s retirement is further evidence of this.

The University of Virginia’s Center for Politics now rates the Wisconsin seat as a “toss-up” instead of “likely Republican” when Ryan was the nominee.

The high likelihood of the Republican Party’s nominee being a Nazi is contributing heavily to that.