A day after Donald Trump’s sweeping Super Tuesday wins, Republicans in Congress acknowledge they may end up having to work with a GOP president some of them have spent months trying to defeat.
Trump remains a long way from winning the White House, but as the undisputed Republican front-runner, a new reality is setting in among GOP lawmakers that there just might be a President Trump in January.
“There’s a probability,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said. “I accept that.”
Cassidy told the Washington Examiner he can “absolutely” work with Trump if he wins the White House, pointing to the real estate mogul’s business successes and his expressed desire to get things accomplished.
If Trump wins and the Senate remains in GOP hands, he’d likely have to work closely with senators who are right now trying to undercut his candidacy with the more mainstream alternative of either Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, or John Kasich, the Ohio governor. Both men trail Trump significantly in delegates.
Sen. John Thune, a GOP leader from South Dakota, said he believes there is “still a path” for a non-Trump nominee, but if Trump does win, Congressional Republicans will find a way forward.
“Politics is always about there being no eternal friends and no eternal enemies,” Thune said. “And I think that you’ll see that among the presidential contenders here at some point. If everyone has a mutual objective and a mutual interest, I think you can see that coming together.”
If Trump makes it to the White House, he’ll likely have to work closely with Sen. Orrin Hatch, who runs the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy.
Hatch, R-Utah, said he knows Trump personally and believes he would work with lawmakers on Capitol Hill even though he takes jabs at lawmakers now from the campaign trail and they fire back at him as well.
“Listen he’s a smart guy,” Hatch told the Examiner. “He’s run the race on a very interesting persona, but he’s very smart. And it wouldn’t take him long to figure out who he has to work with and how he has to work with them.”
But it might be awkward.
On Tuesday night during a post-victory press conference, Trump at first appeared conciliatory toward party leaders on Capitol Hill, who on earlier in the day denounced Trump’s Sunday talk show refusal to disavow the support of white supremacist David Duke.
Trump said he could “get along great” with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., but he warned, “if I don’t, he’s going to have to pay a big price.”
Republican leaders have issued their own subtle threats against Trump, too.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday affirmed to reporters that he has privately told GOP lawmakers they would drop Trump “like a hot rock” if he becomes the nominee, in order to preserve the GOP majority in the critical November election.
McConnell has worked to distance Senate Republicans from Trump, who has called for building a wall on the Mexican border and banning Muslims from coming to the United States.
Trump would have to closely collaborate with McConnell, who would presumably maintain his post as majority leader in a GOP-controlled Senate next year.
Senators insist that despite the chilly relationship that exists now between McConnell and Trump, the two could work together if Trump wins the White House.
“We have all been in professional relationships in which harsh words have been exchanged and the subsequent working relationship was productive,” Cassidy said.
Trump would likely have to repair his relationship with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., whom Trump attacked over his military record.
McCain, a former Navy pilot, spent five years in a prison camp after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War.
Trump last summer said McCain was “not a war hero,” adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.”
McCain told the Examiner Wednesday that his role at the helm of Armed Services means that nothing would stop him from working with a President Trump one day, but he also had nothing nice to say about the front-runner.
“I have to work with anybody,” McCain said. “I can work with anyone.”
But McCain added he can also work with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, or Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the socialist challenger trailing Clinton.
While Trump has racked up the most delegates by a long shot, some Republican senators are still pushing for either Rubio or Kasich. They aren’t ready to envision a relationship with President Trump.
“I still think Marco Rubio will be our nominee,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., told the Examiner. “So I don’t want to jump to hypotheticals. I would just suggest what we have seen throughout the country’s history are opposing parties and philosophical differences and we always find a bridge.”
