Top Republicans are still twisting themselves into knots explaining their support for Donald Trump.
It’s expected that Republican officials, activists and lawmakers would endorse their party’s presumptive presidential nominee — and usually something that doesn’t require rationalizing.
But Trump is not a typical Republican politician.
The New York businessman’s brash style offends some (including a few of his newest high profile supporters inside the GOP) and his populism is out of step with the conservative base on some key issues.
So one month after Trump vanquished his last primary foes, Republican officials and veteran operatives continue to qualify their support with unusual disclaimers and a heavy emphasis on their commitment to defeating like Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“He’s not going to change the Republican Party,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said of Trump this week in an interview with radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
“We’ve had nominees before who were not deeply into Republican politics and philosophy,” McConnell continued. “Trump is not going to change the institution; he’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party.”
That might be news to Trump.
The GOP’s new standard bearer has vowed a change of course from decades of Republican foreign policy, ignored what had been a developing GOP consensus on taking a softer, more inclusive approach to courting Hispanics, the country’s fast growing demographic group, and throw overboard the party’s adherence to free market economics.
Trump himself has previously said that he’s building a “new Republican Party” and downplayed the role of traditional conservatism in determining the direction of the GOP.
“I have to stay true to my principles also,” Trump said in an interview last month. “I’m a conservative. But don’t forget, this is called the Republican Party. It’s not called the Conservative Party. You know, there are conservative parties. It’s called the Republican Party.”
If there’s an argument that is helping Trump win over Republicans skeptical of his candidacy, it’s his vow to nominate a conservative jurist to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia — and the notion of Clinton filling that seat and possibly others that might open during the next presidential term.
Senate Republicans are refusing to consider President Obama’s nominee to succeed Scalia, hoping that Trump wins the election and nominates a conservative.
As McConnell said in his interview with Hewitt: “I’m comfortable voting for him because on the big things that I think have the greatest impact o the future of the country — at the top of the list is the Supreme Court — I think he’ll be just fine.”
But the hesitation among top Republicans to fully and enthusiastically get behind the new national leader of their party remains palpable.
Some, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., are still holding out for guarantees from Trump that he will preserve the conservative philosophy that has undergirded GOP policies at least since the 1964 nomination of Barry Goldwater, if not the election of Ronald Reagan.
Other Republicans have gone ahead and endorsed — sort of.
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee was asked on May 12 if he was supporting Trump, who has been crowned the presumptive nominee more than a week prior. He told the Washington Examiner during a brief interview that he would “support the Republican nominee when we have one.”
Presumably, Alexander was referring to the mid July GOP convention in Cleveland, when Trump will formally accept the party’s nomination for president.
Meanwhile, some Republicans have announced that they intend to vote for Trump over Clinton but stressed that such statements shouldn’t be treated as an endorsement; others have admitted to voting for him in their state’s primary but made the exercise sound like a trip to the dentist’s office.
“Did I cast my ballot with enthusiasm? Not exactly — I’m still getting to know Mr. Trump like so many others,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, of Washington, the House GOP conference chairwoman, wrote in a May 18 Facebook post.
“Do I have concerns about the comments he made in the past and on the campaign trail this year about women; people with disabilities; and those from different backgrounds? Absolutely,” McMorris Rodgers continued. “I vehemently disagree with such statements. They are wrong in a Presidential campaign; in our workplaces; in our homes; and anywhere else.”
