So are the erstwhile voices of GOP reason now utterly resigned to a President Hillary Clinton?
I can see no other reasonable explanation for Lindsey Graham raising money for Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush endorsing him.
As recently as Feb. 25 — that’s less than a month, people — our senior senator was saying “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” That’s how utterly unthinkable supporting Ted Cruz was.
That was in the same speech in which he said “My party’s gone bats— crazy,” since it was narrowing its presidential choices to Cruz and Donald Trump. There was plenty of evidence to support his assertion.
But it must be catching, because Sen. Graham is now supporting and raising funds for the unthinkable Cruz, apparently operating on the principle that Trump is even less thinkable.
Now we have this:
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush endorsed Ted Cruz for president on Wednesday, the latest sign that the Texas senator is eagerly seeking to unite Republican Party leaders behind his campaign in an attempt to stop Donald Trump.
Securing the Bush endorsement is a coup for Cruz, who may not be well-liked by many GOP colleagues in Washington, but can now boast the support of a key political family and its vast, unrivaled donor network….
And that follows on this even greater outrage, offering clear evidence that Mitt Romney may have gone the most “bats___” of all:
First Romney recorded robocalls for Marco Rubio, then he hit the campaign trail with John Kasich. Now just a week later, he’s urging voters in Utah and Arizonanot to vote for the Ohio governor in a Cruz campaign robocall. “This is a time for Republicans across the spectrum to unite behind Ted. He is the only Republican candidate who can defeat Donald Trump,” Romney says in the message, according to Politico. “And at this point, a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump.”
Romney said last week that he intends to vote for Cruz in Utah’s caucuses on Tuesday, but his allies stressed that he wasn’t endorsing the Texas senator. On Facebook, Romney explained that he likes Kasich and would have voted for him in Ohio, “but a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail.” There was a time when saying you intend to vote for a particular candidate and urging others not to vote for anyone else would be called an endorsement, but that’s not how things work in 2016….
Gentlemen, it is clear that you have but one honorable choice at this point, given that Trump and Cruz are still what Graham accurately said they were back in January — a choice between “being shot or poisoned:” Get behind John Kasich with all your might. Work your networks to try to get friendly delegates to the convention, to support him on the ballots after Trump fails on the first.
So what if he’s coming in third in most states? That’s a whole lot better than you supposed exemplars of the party, Lindsey and Jeb, managed to do when you were running. Do you really, truly, not stand for anything?
Have some self-respect. Get behind an honorable candidate who doesn’t make you retch when you think of him being president. At the very least, strengthen his hand so that even if he can’t get nominated, there’s a rational person in better position to help determine who does.
Other sincere, mainstream Republicans — ones with less high profiles — have had no trouble doing this. What’s your problem?
Perhaps you should just come out and acknowledge that you are resigned to Hillary Clinton being elected. Because that seems the logical outcome of the courses you’re pursuing, supporting a candidate you cannot stand for the nomination.
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“apparently operating on the principle that Trump is even less thinkable.”
Or, he’s just a typical Republican Party hack doing what he has always done.
I’m sure the $11.48 Graham is able to raise for Cruz will be the driving force that pushes Cruz to the top.
This is all SO ironic.
Partisans, both Democratic and Republican, regularly decry open primaries because they think adherents of the opposite party will come over and try to nominate the weakest candidate in THEIR party, so they can win in fall.
And yet we have three loyal, leading Republicans — no one with better credentials — deliberately backing a candidate they despise, a guy who they believe would make a HORRIBLE president. AND someone who polls show would lose the election. That’s who they’re trying to put on their ballot for November.
In other words, doing exactly what paranoids think members of the opposite party would do.
As I say, the likely outcome of their actions is President Hillary Clinton. (Of the three, Kasich is the one Republican likely to beat her in the fall. Here are the numbers.)
They’ve evidently decided that it’s SO important to save their precious party from Trumpism that losing in the fall is a secondary or tertiary consideration.
Here’s something that ought to keep them up nights: Suppose they’ve miscalculated. Suppose Hillary is indicted or something, and LOSES to Cruz?
Then where is their stupid party? And infinitely more importantly, where is the country?
It’s the perfect storm of Presidential elections. Not one candidate, standing or suspended, is worthy of the office.
The only way this works out for the country is if a nominated Hillary does get indicted, opening the way for an actual, non-divisive, political leader. If not, it is clearly Hillary’s to lose. That makes my skin crawl, but it’s a better alternative than any the GOP is going to be able to put up this go-around.
So true. :/
I have obtained exclusive video footage of Romney, Jeb!, Lindsey, and Tim Scott all figuring out who they will choose to endorse. (Must credit Permanent Press)
Once again today, in their lede editorial, The Wall Street Journal rightly makes the case for what I’ve been saying.
Against the backdrop of the GOP Establishment, against all reason, lining up behind Cruz and even, most bizarrely, urging Kasich to drop out, the paper points out what should be obvious.
Three of the biggest points are:
Excerpts:
But go and read the whole thing, if you can get past the pay wall. The headline is “The Republican Predicament.”
It’s reassuring to see someone else out there making sense. I’ve started to feel like Oliver Wendell Douglas on “Green Acres” — the one sane man in a community in which everyone else blithely accepts lunacy as right and normal…