The most important storyline of August is how many Republicans come out against their party’s nominee. If the base fractures, Donald Trump is doomed. So far, while a string of elites and vulnerable incumbents in blue states have defected, the grassroots has mostly – if reluctantly – coalesced.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announces in a new op-ed for The Post that she will not vote for Trump. The centrist cites his mocking of a disabled reporter, his attacks on a federal judge over his Mexican heritage and his feud with the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq.
Fifty former national security officials who served in Republican administrations signed an open letter, released Monday, saying they will not support Trump because “he would be the most reckless President in American history.”
With the notable exception of Ted Cruz, commentators and pundits have covered GOP politicians who have spoken out against Trump as courageous and brave. While these are agonizing, career-defining decisions for lawmakers, they are also at heart based on cold political calculus. And that must not be lost in the conversation.
Most politicians respond more to political incentives than principles. That’s the single most important insight to understanding how Washington really works.
Every Republican who has bucked Trump can be pretty easily categorized. A clear pattern emerges: the less directly and immediately accountable to Republican base voters an elected official is, the more likely he or she is to break with Trump.
Case in point 1: Compare George P. Bush to his father, uncle and grandpa. The Texas Land Commissioner wants to be governor someday – 2022 maybe? – and he knows that will be harder if the Trump diehards are out to get him. So this weekend he urged Republicans to support Trump. Jeb, 41 and 43 will, of course, never be on a ballot again. So they are safe to stay on the sidelines.
Ask yourself: Could you bring yourself to endorse a guy who disparaged your mom, said that your dad’s position on immigration was based on the fact that she was born in Mexico and then refused to apologize for it?
Case in point 2: Compare Susan Collins to next-door neighbor Kelly Ayotte.
Ayotte, one of the most vulnerable Republican senators in November, still has to fend off a primary opponent on Sept. 13. Trump won the New Hampshire primary by almost 20 points, and her team believes she loses more by breaking with him than she would gain. This is backed up by some public and private polling. If Trump goes down hard this fall, she will probably go down with him.
Meanwhile, speculation on the ground in the much more Democratic-leaning Maine (and among fellow senators in Washington) is that Collins has her eyes on running for governor in 2018. Paul LePage, the polarizing Republican incumbent who is an outspoken supporter of Trump, is termed out. (She has declined to rule it out when asked.)
Assuming Collins would face no credible challenge for the nomination – or could always run as an independent if need be – distancing herself from Trump would help greatly. And, thinking about the GOP base, Collins pointedly says in her op-ed that she does not support Hillary Clinton either. . ..)
Case in point 3: Compare 2012 nominee Mitt Romney to 2008 nominee John McCain.
Romney remains in the Never Trump camp because the 69-year-old has no plans to ever run for office. His son might, but it would be in Utah – where Trump is dangerously unpopular.
Does anyone reading this believe that McCain would be caught dead saying nice things about Trump – who has questioned his heroism and besmirched his decades of service to veterans – if he didn’t have a tough reelection fight, including a primary challenge to contend with on Aug. 30, and Trump had not won the March primary in his state by 22 points?
Like George P. and Collins, others breaking with Trump are ambitious politicians who are playing the long game:
John Kasich, Ohio, and Ted Cruz, Texas, both want to run for president in 2020, and they believe that not supporting Trump will give them more credibility to claim the mantle of leadership after November. There are other up-and-coming politicians who may run in 2020, as well.
Compare Sen. Ben Sasse, Neb., to Sen. Tom Cotton, Ark. Both freshmen senators probably see a future president when they look at themselves in the mirror. Both are playing Republican Roulette: One is putting all his chips on red; the other, on black.
Cotton has alienated some intellectual leaders of the conservative movement with his relatively steadfast support for Trump.
Sasse has alienated Trump diehards in the rank-and-file (they’ve been showing up at his town hall meetings during the August recess hopping mad), but his stock is very high among the leading lights of the conservative movement. (Bill Kristol affectionately calls him “The Boy Tweeter of the Platte,” an homage to William Jennings Bryan – who more than a century ago was called “The Boy Wonder of The Platte.”)
Sasse, who is only 44, passed on running for president as an independent this year, despite lots of encouragement to do so. The Yale history PhD is cognizant of what happens to people who are perceived as spoilers…
Cotton, who is still in his 30s, is working to cement his popularity among the Trump-friendly grassroots in his home state of Arkansas.
It also makes total sense for those Republican lawmakers fighting for their political survival – from deep-blue states – to break with an unpopular nominee. Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk is probably going to lose in November, and Trump will lose in his state by double digits. So he recanted his support.
Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, who represents the swing suburbs of Denver, promises to be a check on a President Trump in a commercial that began airing last week.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker will both be up for reelection in 2018.
Others who have come out against Trump having nothing to lose. Not being on the ballot ever again will embolden some to take a stand. The two House Republicans who have received the most attention for criticizing Trump over the past week – New York’s Richard Hanna and Virginia’s Scott Rigell – are both retiring from Congress and not on the ballot in November. (Rigell resigned Monday from the Virginia Beach Republican Party.)
In addition to principle, here are some of the reasons non-elected Republicans might be denouncing Trump:
They are seeking attention and relevance.
There are some old-timers whose moment in the arena has long since passed, but they badly want to appear on one last Sunday show or get booked on cable again. Speaking out against Trump is the surest fire way to make this happen.
Ex-South Dakota Sen. Larry Pressler, who lost reelection as a Republican in 1996 and then a comeback bid in 2014 as an independent, twice voted for Barack Obama. So his getting behind Clinton is not actually surprising or even particularly interesting.
A friend of the ex-senator with experience in PR emailed several reporters at different media organizations to say he wanted to talk about how he couldn’t support Trump in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. Many outlets bit. MSNBC even put him on the air for seven minutes in primetime.
There’s also a class of aging Rockefeller Republicans who pop up in the news every once in a while to trash today’s more conservative GOP leaders. In June, it was former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson’s turn. Monday, former Michigan Gov. William Milliken – who has been out of office for 33 years – got a news cycle for endorsing Clinton. For anyone who knows anything about Michigan politics, it would be more surprising had he endorsed Trump!
Frank Lavin, a former political director for Ronald Reagan, announced his support for Clinton in an op-ed for CNN. The cable channel then allowed him to Skype in from Singapore for a hit on the channel. He seemed to really be enjoying himself. (Notably, he is the CEO of a company that helps U.S. brands sell online in China.)
Doug Elmets, an obscure ex-speechwriter for Reagan, got a prime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention to announce his support for Clinton. (He’s previously given money to Dems at least half a dozen times.)
Clinton is trying to trickle out as many GOP endorsements as she can get, no matter how small bore. A press release from Brooklyn Tuesday morning announced that William K. Reilly, the EPA Administrator under George H. W. Bush, is endorsing Clinton. You are forgiven if you don’t remember him.
Everyone is doing it (in their circle).
Virtually none of the éminence grises in the Republican foreign policy establishment will say a nice word about Trump. It is fashionable at cocktail parties, even when only in the company of lifelong Republicans, to express disgust. For many D.C. GOP power brokers, their base is not the grassroots – but other GOP elites in D.C.
That’s why it proved so easy to get 50 signatures for that letter from veterans of the national security community. The Washington Post’s Carol Morello flags some of the biggest names: Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge, former secretaries of homeland security; Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency; John Negroponte, a former director of national intelligence and deputy secretary of state; Robert Zoellick, who also was a deputy secretary of state and president of the World Bank and the U.S. trade representative under (W.); Carla Hills, the U.S. trade representative under (H.W.); and William H. Taft IV, a former deputy secretary of defense and ambassador to NATO under the elder Bush.” (Read the full letter here.)
Rather than ignore the letter and the 50 people who signed it, which a conventional campaign would do in order to keep it from drawing more attention, Trump put out a lengthy statement attacking the signatories. “The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place,” he wrote. “They are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power, and it’s time they are held accountable for their actions. These insiders – along with Hillary Clinton – are the owners of the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq, allow Americans to die in Benghazi, and they are the ones who allowed the rise of ISIS. Yet despite these failures, they think they are entitled to use their favor trading to land taxpayer-funded government contracts and speaking fees.”
To be clear, many of the folks mentioned above are patriots who deeply love this country and are profoundly terrified by Trump. It’s not mutually exclusive to feel authentic antipathy toward Trump while also playing an angle. Many very thoughtful people who have spent their careers in public service have concluded that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian who must never be in control of the most powerful nuclear arsenal and military in the history of mankind. They see him as a faux conservative who is telling people what they want to hear so he can obtain power. Finally, they see him as a racist demagogue who goes after Mexicans and Muslims to irresponsibly play on fear.
In this group is the spokesman for the Florida Republican Party, who announced Monday that he is quitting his job to avoid defending Trump. From The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe: “Wadi Gaitan, a former senior House Republican aide who focused on Hispanic affairs, becomes yet another high-profile Latino Republican official to leave his job because he can no longer tolerate defending and explaining Trump.” Gaitan will join the LIBRE Initiative, a conservative Hispanic group backed by the Koch brothers. He said it will allow him to avoid efforts that support Trump.
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