House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he is no longer going to enthusiastically support Donald Trump as his Party’s presidential candidate. This is in reaction to the audio recording of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women.

Apparently, Speaker Ryan has made the decision that because Donald Trump’s comments about women were so offensive, that Trump is now more likely to lose the election. Ryan feels that it is now critically important that he work to keep GOP majorities in the House and Senate, that if the Republicans can’t win the White House, they can at least retain control of Congress.

There are several aspects of this position that prompt a rational “what is he thinking?” response. For one thing, it is strange that Speaker Ryan feels that Trump’s language toward women disqualifies him from the White House when Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, aggressively acted to protect a far more abusive politician, her husband Bill Clinton, from criticism by his victims. Hillary Clinton intimidated, bullied, and harassed victims of her husband’s sexually harassing behavior so her husband could get reelected. How Speaker Ryan has one set of standards for Donald Trump and another for Hillary and Bill Clinton is something he has not yet explained, and given his position in the Republican Party, needs to explain. Why he would willfully choose to leave a person with bad behavior to enable one far worse to win the election is baffling.

The more important issue is what Speaker Ryan hopes to achieve by throwing Donald Trump under the bus in favor of keeping majorities in the House and Senate. The fact is, Speaker Ryan’s Republican Party has had majority control of the House and Senate for years, and accomplished nothing. President Obama refused to negotiate with Speaker Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for years. Obama would not even discuss budget priorities. Instead, Obama printed QE money and used a combination of czars and executive orders to take over Congress’s power to legislate. Speaker Ryan’s leadership of the House has been ineffective, at best.

Having failed to pass any meaningful legislation with the Democrat President Obama, Speaker Ryan now feels it is more important to maintain the House’s status as a eunuch than do whatever he can to ensure that the White House is occupied by a Republican. This is the situation Speaker Ryan faces: he was unable to work with President Obama even though his Party had majorities in the House and Senate. Now he feels it’s more important to retain his do-nothing majority with a Democrat President, than have a Republican President to work with.

Why Speaker Ryan chooses to preside over a neutered House with Hillary Clinton as President, than work with Trump as the GOP President, baffles political analysis. If Hillary is elected President, Speaker Ryan could no more achieve any important legislative progress with her than he has been able to achieve with Obama. He should know that. But apparently that does enter into his analysis. Ryan needs to explain why he would make more progress with Hillary as president than he and McConnell were able to achieve with Obama.

In reality Hillary will be more petulant than Obama. She already refuses to cooperate with Congress’s investigations of her emails. She ordered her IT specialist to refuse to show up at a Congressional Hearing on the email scandal and she refuses to answer any meaningful questions at press conferences. She will continue to control the Department of Justice by controlling Attorney General Lynch and FBI Director Comey. Her presidency will be characterized by an endless parade of investigations into her corrupt behavior. She shows all the signs of withdrawing from public scrutiny, the press and Congress. She will rule more as an autocrat than President Obama, working very hard to remove any impact Congress has on discretionary spending. She will likely start another QE program and raise taxes, further driving the nation into economic recession.

How Paul Ryan sees this degradation of the separation of powers as desirable is difficult to understand. The only possible answer is that Ryan enjoys his personal status as House Speaker with its perks of office and has more concern with preserving his status than helping the GOP pass any legislation.

Speaker Ryan has not thoroughly addressed these issues. But his refusal to enthusiastically support his party’s presidential nominee is very unusual, if not unprecedented. He is adding to the chaos in Washington, not working to reestablish the proper rule of order in national government. What is particularly troubling is that what he is doing is destructive of his own Party, at a time when Republicans need to unify and work for the American people. He has shown very poor judgment and should be held responsible if Trump loses and a chaotic, highly corrupt Hillary Clinton administration further degrades the separation of powers and the well-being of the American people.