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 Speaker of the House of Representatives Ryan has invited Trump,
this year's likely Republican presidential nominee, to meet on
Thursday with Ryan and other congressional leaders on Capitol Hill,
Ryan's office said in a statement on Friday.
A key part of the conversation is sure to be Trump's combative,
in-your-face campaign persona and Republican leaders' requests for
him to tone it down, but political analysts said Ryan will have
other considerations in mind, as well.
One issue is likely to be his own future, said Larry Sabato,
director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Ryan, 46, lost his 2012 campaign for vice president as Mitt Romney's
running mate. Ryan probably has serious doubts that Trump, like
Romney, can win this year, Sabato said.
If so, Ryan will want to find a balance between accepting Trump, 69,
as the nominee and keeping some distance from him, just in case the
real estate mogul's campaign ends in disaster.
 "Suppose Trump loses overwhelmingly. Would you want to have been
siding with the captain of the Titanic, or maybe seen as someone who
was begging the captain to watch out for icebergs?" Sabato said,
adding that a Trump defeat could push the party in a different
direction in 2020, maybe toward Ryan as the nominee.
WALKING A TIGHTROPE
As chairman of the Republican Party convention in Cleveland in July,
Ryan's political tightrope will be especially perilous.
One of his objectives will be to provide political cover for his 246
House Republicans so they can choose to embrace or run away from
Trump, depending on their home districts' politics, with the goal of
preserving control of the House, analysts said.
Ryan dropped a bombshell on Thursday when he said he was not ready
to endorse Trump until he shows he can unify the party, still
reeling from a bitter primary campaign that left many establishment
Republicans stunned at Trump's victory.
One moderate Pennsylvania congressman, Representative Charlie Dent,
said he thought most of his fellow House Republicans would be
comfortable with what Ryan said, because they were "conflicted"
themselves over whether to support Trump.
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Some Republican lawmakers worry that Trump is not conservative
enough; others are more bothered by Trump's "divisive, incendiary
remarks and lack of substance," said Dent, who put himself in the
latter category.
However, a conservative Republican congressman, Raul Labrador of
Idaho, told CNN that Ryan "needs to reconsider what he's doing"
concerning Trump.
"A lot of people that are voting for Donald Trump are totally
disaffected with what we're doing in Washington D.C., and he (Ryan)
almost kind of slapped them in the face when he said what he did,"
said Labrador, who endorsed Ted Cruz but says he will vote for Trump
now that Cruz is out of the race.
As speaker, Ryan has struggled with his deeply divided colleagues
over budget issues, funding the battle against the Zika virus,
rescuing Puerto Rico from a debt crisis, and helping Flint,
Michigan, deal with their contaminated water system.
Ryan is "trying to jawbone Trump into adjusting his positions" to
line up better with the party establishment, said Norm Ornstein, a
resident scholar and political analyst at the conservative American
Enterprise Institute.
The "unprecedented" move by a congressional leader to distance
himself from his party's expected nominee, Ornstein said, showed
Ryan trying to mold a "less confrontational and divisive approach to
minorities and a less isolationist and combative approach to our
allies."
In a swipe at Trump on Friday, President Barack Obama warned that
occupying the Oval Office "is not a reality show."
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Editing by Paul
Tait)
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