Some Washington Republicans inched this weekend toward a difficult admission: They might prefer Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump in the White House.
Almost no elected Republican so far has explicitly said that they would take Clinton over Trump. But that is the undeniable direction of a “Stop Trump” movement that is now openly considering supporting an independent general election bid by a conservative candidate who would likely siphon votes from the Republican nominee, aiding Clinton.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday, if Trump captures the GOP nomination, by opposing his election, conservatives will be effectively supporting the Democratic nominee, regardless of the conservative principles in which their decision is wrapped.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. in remarks that drew limited notice Sunday, said that the party would be better off losing without Trump than trying to win with him.
“We can lose an election, but I don’t want us to lose our heart and soul,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “If we nominate Donald Trump, and he carries the banner of the Republican Party, given who he is and what he said about immigrants, about Muslims and young women, we will not just lose the election. We have lost the heart and soul of the conservative movement. That’s what is at stake.”
Graham called Trump an “interloper and a “demagogue” who would be “an absolute disaster for the Republican party” and “destroy conservatism” as the GOP nominee.
The South Carolina senator was arguing for denying Trump the nomination. Graham did not mention Clinton. But his reasoning seems clear: It would be better to allow Clinton to win than to decimate the GOP by hitching the party to what critics call Trumpism.
Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to be sure, hopes to win nomination and the general election. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said Sunday he might open to a deal with Cruz, also insisted he is in the race to win.
“I’m the one that can win the fall” Kasich said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
But by supporting Cruz, the only GOP presidential candidate whom election handicappers consider a potentially worse general election candidate than Trump, Republicans like Graham edge toward conceding a likely win by Clinton, who has all but locked up the Democratic nomination, despite Sen. Bernie Sanders’ increasingly far-fetched explanations for how he can beat her.
In emphasizing Sunday that endangered Senate Republicans can run campaigns intended to distance themselves from their general election candidate, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., inched toward a similar conclusion, even as McConnell pledged to support the Republican nominee no matter who it is.
And in openly discussing the prospect of recruiting a conservative like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry or former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to run as independent against Trump, a group of conservatives led by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol put a higher value on opposing Trump than defeating Clinton.
Trump argued Sunday that such an effort would “hand the election to Hillary Clinton.”
“The Republicans wouldn’t even have 1 percent of a chance of winning if that’s the case,” he told ABC. “So if they’re going to be stupid and if they’re going to do that instead of embracing these millions of people that are coming in to vote, then they’re going to have to do that.”
Priebus agreed. “Of course it would,” he said Sunday when asked if recruiting a third-party candidate would “doom” the party’s chances in a general election.
Even Kristol was hard-pressed this weekend to muster an argument that a third-party challenge would amount to a realistic bid to win the White House, rather than an vehicle for principled conservatives to oppose Trump without directly backing Clinton.
Responding to a reporter who argued the effort would merely split votes between Trump and the conservative candidate, Kristol, referring to polling that shows more voters disapprove than approve of both Clinton and Trump, offered a qualified response.
“With HRC at 56% & Trump at 67% unfavorable, victory isn’t at all out of the question,” he tweeted.
Maybe not. But that claim suggests that for some Republicans, victory is less of a priority than averting damage to the party. For those conservatives, at least this year, winning isn’t everything.