At Paul Ryan town hall, not a word on Russia

House Speaker Paul Ryan joined CNN's Jake Tapper for a nationally-televised town hall in Ryan's Wisconsin district Monday night. CNN picked the questioners and the questions, promising to cover a range of topics of concern to Ryan's constituents and Americans in general. Many of those questions had a local feel, since Ryan stressed that he personally knew this or that questioner, or some member of the questioner's family.

The topics included President Trump's plan for Afghanistan, announced minutes before the event began. There was a lot on the aftermath of Charlottesville and Trump's statements regarding it. (One questioner, the sister of former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, asked Ryan whether he would support censure of the president; Ryan said no and predicted such an action would be a "partisan hack-fest" and a "political food fight.") There was a question, from a Republican perspective, on the GOP's failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. A question on tax reform. A question on anti-poverty policy. A question on the newly-announced plans for tech giant Foxconn to build a plant in Wisconsin. A question (from the county medical examiner) on the opioid crisis. A question on the North Korea crisis. A question on the state of the Republican Party. And finally, from Tapper, a question about the progress of Rep. Steve Scalise, wounded in June in an attack by an anti-Republican gunman.

So there were plenty of questions, on plenty of subjects. But there was not one question, nor one word said, about the issue that has consumed Washington in recent months: the Trump-Russia affair, or the Mueller investigation into it. Or, for that matter, about Russia itself.

Even though the event, at the Racine Theatre Guild, was in Ryan's district, it was not a predominantly Republican audience. Nor were most of the questions from a GOP perspective. There were clearly negative feelings about the president in the crowd. (A recent NBC/Marist poll found Trump with a 34 percent job approval rating and a 61 percent personal disapproval rating in Wisconsin.) There seemed to be no hesitation to ask Ryan about Trump's actions or statements. And yet no one mentioned the Russia affair.

In several conversations recently, local Republican leaders in Wisconsin stressed that there was little voter concern over the Russia affair. In other states, some Democrats have expressed worries that their party has made too big a deal of the issue. An article in The Hill in June, "Dems push leaders to talk less about Russia," had three examples: