Since we don’t know how the presidential election will turn out this year, we can’t say what the history books will tell us about it, but a psychological study of the Republican Party in this moment of crisis would be a classic for all times to come. It may be coincidence that the two GOP senators who are the most “Never Trump” (Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse) aren’t running this cycle, but for those who are, and are running close races in states with Trump fans and Trump haters, it is a case less of being for Trump before being against him than of being both for AND against him at once.
“While he has my support, he doesn’t have my endorsement,” Kelly Ayotte said of Trump in New Hampshire, insisting there was “a distinction” between them, though she couldn’t explain what it was. As the one embattled Senate Republican who has neither endorsed or renounced Trump, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey has been threading the needle, saying he wants to support “the nominee of my party” while admitting he isn’t there yet.
“Fifteen months into a Trump campaign that has captivated the world, the senator insisted in an interview that he is “still learning things about this nominee,” Philip Rucker wrote almost a month ago, suggesting the process may go on forever. Marco Rubio, on the other hand, has endorsed Trump without really supporting him, phoning in a 90 second address to the convention in Philadelphia in which he mentioned a number of conservative positions that Trump had taken, and urged his party to go out and “win in November,” without further saying what they’d be winning.
As Jacob Sullum wrote, he could have been telling his party to hold on to Congress, (or to go out and win at the tables in Vegas,) and he never took back what he had said earlier: that Trump was a con man and fraud. “Watch Marco Rubio endorse a vulgar con artist,” said Sullum, correctly. Like John McCain and Pat Toomey, Rubio is running on a pledge to restrain and oppose whoever is president. You may not need enemies when you have these kinds of friends
Along with the politicians, one also has pundits, who don’t have to think about pleasing the voters, but split hairs and sometimes cut deals with the devil as they fight to keep faith with themselves. “Thinking Republicans should NOT SUPPORT Donald Trump, but they should reluctantly VOTE for him,” wrote political science professor James Campbell on Sept. 7. “Supporting implies a positive assessment. A vote is a choice … We don’t have to support our candidate to vote for him. We can even openly denounce him. But by nominating Hillary Clinton, Democrats have made it possible for us to vote for a candidate we don’t and can’t support.”
Then there’s radio host and Cruz fan Mark Levin, who swore when Cruz lost he would never come over — but did. “I’m gonna vote for Donald Trump. I’m gonna wind up voting for him on election day,” he told the world recently, adding, however, “I take no responsibility for the dumb things he says.” Then two days later, he banned Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus from his radio program — for the offense of having helped Trump. “He contributed to dragging down the Republican Party,” Levin ranted. “He’s Donald Trump’s new friend.” Now he’s “Trump’s friend” too, and he must live with him. He hates Priebus for being himself.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
