I’m solidly liberal, and I didn’t have a very high opinion of the Republican establishment to begin with. (Higher than some folks on the SDMB seem to have, though – I generally think of them as more misguided than outright evil.) But I’ve actually been finding I underestimated them a bit. I wouldn’t have expected to see a Fox News commentator calling out Trump’s sexist comments during a debate. And I wouldn’t have expected to see the Speaker of the House calling out Trump for making “the textbook definition of a racist comment”. So if anything, my opinion of them has gone up a bit.
Most establishment Republicans still seem willing to endorse Trump if that’s what it takes to beat Clinton, of course. But I expected that. I would have also expected that they’d try to pretend that he wasn’t a racist, sexist creep, and to pretend that the racist, sexist words coming out of his mouth were somehow the work of the “liberal media” trying to make him look bad. But for the most part that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening.
If they abandoned their support for him, my opinion for them (which is very low) would go up. If they didn’t criticize him at all, then my opinion for them would go down.
But criticizing him while still saying they support him? That’s par for the (shitty) course, as I see it.
Interesting that Sen. Mark Kirk just withdrew his support of Trump. At least he’s not being a weasel, although he’s still the most vulnerable Republican senator
Republicans have known since Trump’s candidacy began that he was a racist white nationalist and we’re perfectly OK with it as long as they thought that hitching their wagons to his would benefit them personally.
It’s only because they’re now worried that endorsing him will cost them that they’re speaking out - while still saying out the other side of their mouth that they’re going to vote for him.
If anything, it only further confirms that the Republican party is unfit to govern at any level.
If they really did all get together and declare that they weren’t having any of this bullshit, and that if that meant Clinton become president so be it, that would raise my opinion of them. They haven’t done that, though.
A few are condemning Trump. Many more are supporting him. A few, like today’s-stupidest-human Paul Ryan, are apparently trying to do both.
Overall, this does not affect my (already low) opinion of them. But it does drive home how completely dysfunctional they are as a party - not only can they not unite to select a presidential candidate, they can’t even unite to reject the one that’s been forced on them.
I went ahead and put my opinion of the party as “not low” though I’m a little mixed on that. I’ve been pretty well disgusted with the last ten years, but I skew conservative in my opinions and feel like the party has had times in history when it operated about as well as any political body could. That’s a pretty low bar to meet - a national party is by definition merging lots of positions together into a mess that very few people are truly happy with, but it was a mess that seemed like a reasonable compromise.
I always saw that compromise as basically having three components: free market, limited government, family values. The first two I basically like. I’m not a purist and I don’t want a libertarian-style extreme, but if we have to make a mistake, it ought to be in favor of smaller government and freer markets. Family values is the component I’ve never been a big fan of. Even if I think lots of traditional social mores are best, government really has no place dictating social policy… and even at the best of times, it was also obvious that some people were using family values as a euphemism for plain old bigotry. It always figured it was a shame that “enlightened businessmen” (as I characterized the ideal part of the party) had to be burdened by “hillbilly rednecks” (as I characterize the less-desirable part), but nothing’s perfect, right?
The Tea Party made me seriously question my little rationalization and Trump has fully destroyed it. The rednecks are running the show and they’re willing to burn it all down.
Yes, I suppose I could answer the poll by saying “Oh, but these people aren’t the establishment. Let’s give the establishment credit.” But, no, I’m done with that.
Credit for what? Let’s take just one issue: After the 2012 loss, there was lots of RNC establishment talk about the importance of a reasonable position on immigration and the necessity of winning the Hispanic vote in future elections. Furthermore, fixing immigration was a major campaign promise from Obama going all the way back to 2008. It’s a bipartisan issue, then, right? That, at least, should have a been a feather in everyone’s cap, right?
I’m one step off from you. Full throated support was what I expected. That some small number of Republicans are stepping back generally improves my view of the party. Even Paul Ryan speaking out of both sides of his mouth is still one entire more mouth side than I expected him to use.
Their reactions are political (duh). They know Trump is a lost cause and associating with him will only hurt their chances downticket and in the future. It’s giving them more credit than they’ve shown they merit to attribute their denunciations of him to any actual basic moral backbone.
I see political professionals acting like political professionals. Which I believe to be a good thing.
Look, the party establishment doesn’t like or want Trump. They don’t like his ideology and they think he’s messing with their agenda. The best possible scenario for them would be strong performance in down ballot races with Hillary in the Presidency. Because a failed Trump Presidency could weaken the GOP brand for years: Trump would be their Jimmy Carter x10.
Smearing Hillary is something they are comfortable with, and they would have no problem juicing up the base with their nonsense for 4-8 years. A Trump Presidency would make them pay a steep political price for policies they don’t particularly want anyway. If he would just go away, they could get back to their dog-whistles and tax cuts for fat cats. Sure Trump will sign any tax cut tilted to higher incomes that crosses his desk, but so would any other GOP President.
And sensible businessfolk understand the importance of NATO.
It’s hard for me to say, since responses to Trump have been so diverse. I respect Ben Sasse a lot, who has been a consistent critic and has said he might vote for Gary Johnson. Lindsey Graham has called for Republicans to renounce their support for Trump.
The ones I respect the least are the ones who said he was unfit and now support him.
The ones I don’t respect much are the ones who supported him early, but at least they liked him from the start.
The RNC should refuse to support Trump and concentrate on Senate races.
Paul Ryan had serious misgivings about Trump, then he endorsed him, then openly called him a textbook racist, yet still maintains his endorsement.
I predicted that most Republicans would be licking Trump’s boots once he sewed up the nomination. I hate to see that prediction come true, but what else did anyone expect?
Characterize it however you wish… the Republican establishment is circling their wagons around him. They’re more unified even than Trump’s own campaign.
The Republican Party should try to thread the needle and square the circle. So they should denounce Trump’s bigotry, because it’s bad politics, bad policy, bad morality, toxic to the GOP brand (which Trump has no investment in and doesn’t care about) and poison in down ballot swing states. Maybe Utah as well.
That said, “I support Trump but I don’t endorse him”, is inane, though public diplomacy can be like that.
Moving forward though, I fully expect to read the opinions of alleged Republican moderates explaining in August and September why Trump really has more character than Hillary. Just as they pontificated that draft dodger GWBush, who lied about his tax plan on the stump, was a better person than war hero John Kerry. That will be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
The republicans don’t know how to deal with Donald Trump. They somehow want to unite behind a republican nominee, but they can’t really seem to unite behind Trump and have to defend themselves against new cringeworthy comments. The result is that the party as a whole, rather than being united, looks weak, confused, and divided. That’s not the image a party wants to project. If it continues, the republicans will lose more than the white house; they will lose massive numbers of seats in congress.
I interpret this as Ryan cheerily stabbing away at Trump’s back. Disavowing him would probably help Trump more. Trump could use it as more evidence for his uneducated voters that elites are against him. Continuing to nominally endorse him while openly ripping him is vastly more damaging.
Much the same interpretation can be made of Ryan’s “endorsement,” which took, what, a week? It was previously unimaginable that a party’s House leader would take more than ten milliseconds to endorse his party’s Presidential candidate - hell, I’m not even certain that even used to be a thing at all. You just sort of assumed, well, of course the Republican Speaker of the House endorsed the Republican candidate, they’re the same damn party. Ryan’s “ehhh… yeah, okay” is like a parent, asking if they love their kid, waiting a week to say “sure, I guess so.”
Ryan WANTS Trump to lose, in part because I think he hates him but also because he wants to run for President in 2020.
But what about the damage it’s doing to Ryan? The New York Daily News planned that today’s cover would have Ryan and Trump on it, with the tag line “I’m with Racist”. They switched at the last minute to a cover about Hilary winning the nomination. Doesn’t even tepid support tar someone like Ryan?
A common charge before 2016 was that Republicans were fine with racism, so long as it came packaged with standard Republican talking points. Now, they are admitting that the talking points don’t even need to be standard Republican ones. Paul Ryan says (paraphrased) “He said unambiguously racist things, but he’s more likely to support our agenda.” I think that pretty much caps it. Yes, he’s a racist, but that’s not what matters.