There wasn’t enough space to finish the thread title, which would be “… no matter what nasty opinions they expressed about him before.”
This applies pretty equally to both Trump and Cruz, though not so much to Cruz lately. He seemed to be thoroughly despised by the party establishment, until he appeared to be the last chance Trump Stopper.
My opinion is, whichever of the two walk out with the nomination, virtually every single elected Republican will swallow their bile and publicly endorse him, no matter how much or how recently they reviled him previously. They may not work hard to turn out the vote for him, or their staff’s might leak stuff about how much they secretly dislike the candidate, but nevertheless there will be a great round of public ass kissing.
Do you think differently? And if so, who do you think might come out publicly trashing their candidate? And will they encourage voters to vote for someone else, or to stay home?
Please note – I’m really only interested in this question in term of elected officials, not party operatives who work mainly out of the public eye.
May depend as much as anything on the particular state. In the northeast, for example, Cruz isn’t all that popular with the Republican rank-and-file, and a Republican elected official has far less to lose staying silent about him than an similar official in Texas or Alabama.
I think it would depend on what the chances of the nominee winning the general looked like. I suspect Trump will stay seven or eight points below Clinton for basically the entire race, in which case the impetus for GOP officials to throw in behind a doomed campaign would be pretty small, outside of those districts where Trump polls well.
If I’m wrong about the general election, and it looks like Trump could win, then I bet he’d find some pretty enthusiastic support amongst House Republcans, and most Senators and Governors would at least offer some pro-forma support, even if it was through clenched teeth.
Republican elected officials who are running for reelection this year will do whatever is best for their own campaign. And that depends on things like how the Presidential candidate is polling, and the voting index of their own district. Did their District vote for Obama in 2012? What does polling show about how their District will vote for President this year?
If the local candidate thinks identifying with the Presidential candidate will help him, he’ll support the Presidential candidate. If he thinks it would hurt his campaign, he will distance himself. (Mostly they won’t attack their Party’s Presidential candidate, they’ll say things like “unlike those career politicians in Washington, I’m working for the good of our own District. I’m more concerned for this District than who sits in the White House”.) If they’re not sure, they will mostly stay quiet about this.
If it’s Trump, a lot of establishment Republicans will probably offer a half-hearted endorsement and say you need to vote for him in order to stop Hillary, but I can’t imagine too many will be out actively stumping or fundraising for the guy.