This question is increasingly a part of the national conversation.
On Monday, Mr. Nehlen went so far as to say he would be open to deporting all Muslims from the country because, he alleged, they may hold Shariah law above the Constitution and are urged to lie by their religion. “I’m suggesting we have a discussion about it, that’s for sure,’’ he said on a Chicago radio show, adding: “We should be monitoring every mosque. We should be monitoring all social media.”
Mr. Nehlen, who is far more conservative than many voters in Mr. Ryan’s district, has still managed to create headaches for the speaker, who has found himself fending off an attack from an opponent to whom he had given little thought, but who has captured the energy and resources of anti-establishment conservatives across the country…
Mr. Nehlen’s first online advertisement, which opens with tracking shots of him riding a Harley Davidson, tattoos that wind down his arms (one is of a 1940s-style pinup meant to honor women who have fought the Islamic State) exposed, rails against trade agreements and inadequate border protection.
“Donald Trump has courageously taken on the entrenched special interests who have sought to suppress the working people of this country,” he told reporters earlier Wednesday at a news conference just blocks from Mr. Ryan’s stately home here.
Mr. Ryan, he added, “is loyal to one thing: the almighty dollar.”
