Republican lawmakers are starting to concede that Donald Trump will become their party’s nominee, though members who back Sen. Ted Cruz are not quite at the point of giving up hope, even after Trump’s sweep of five eastern states Tuesday night.
“We are going to have Trump,” Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., said after leaving a closed-door GOP meeting in the Capitol basement the morning following Trump’s big win.
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Pitts supports Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president. But he looks skeptically upon the views of Republican lawmakers still trying to carve out a scenario that would stop Trump from winning.
Among the states swept by Trump on Tuesday was Pitts’ own, Pennsylvania, and Pitts said denying Trump the nod won’t work.
“He won every county in all five states,” Pitts said.
Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., who identifies himself as one of four early “anti-Trump” lawmakers, agreed that the reality of the delegate math is sinking in on Capitol Hill.
“Many of us are reconciling ourselves to the fact that he is our nominee,” Sanford said of Trump.
Still, some Republican lawmakers have set their hopes on the upcoming primaries in Indiana and California, which are considered last-ditch contests for Cruz to capture a big chunk of delegates and deny Trump the 1,237 needed to win the nomination outright. Among them is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a 13-term congressman from California, where 152 delegates are up for grabs on June 7.
“I would say that Cruz has a real chance of winning the whole state,” Rohrabacher said.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., another Cruz backer, isn’t writing off the Texas lawmaker either. Meadows said Cruz’s expansive campaign organization could carry him to big victories in Indiana and California, where Trump is considered much further behind Cruz when it comes to establishing ground operations.
“I’m a numbers guy,” Meadows told the Washington Examiner. “Everybody is claiming that it’s over, but as you start to look at what is left, they are a well oiled machine in terms of organization.”
“Cruz’s ground operation could help him win in California, where organization may be the key to capturing the state’s 53 districts,” Meadows said. “I’ve never seen a campaign as well organized at the state and national level as the Cruz campaign.”
Rohrabacher also predicted that Trump’s big win on Tuesday could motivate anti-Trump campaign workers and increase their numbers and determination to help Cruz win the state.
“The fact is that the morale of the Cruz people cannot be helped by having a Trump victory like they did last night,” Rohrabacher said. “However, the people who are supporting Cruz are issue-driven, not ego driven. So Trump’s victory in the last few nights may well indeed cause these workers to become more involved.”
But Rohrabacher acknowledged the window for stopping Trump is becoming increasingly narrow. Trump now needs to win about 50 percent of the delegates in the next contests in order to secure the nomination.
Rohrabacher acknowledged that reality could dampen the enthusiasm among voters and campaign workers who Cruz desperately needs to stay alive in the race.
“You have to wait and see what the morale factor is,” Rohrabacher said. “It’s not over, but it’s getting more difficult.”
