Drip, Drip, Drip. How long can Republican leaders cling to Donald Trump's traveling circus?

[DonViejo]

Drip, Drip, Drip
How long can Republican leaders cling to Donald Trump's traveling circus?

By Robert Schlesinger | Managing Editor
Aug. 5, 2016, at 6:00 a.m.

For Donald Trump's fellow Republicans, this campaign is increasingly about binary choices, but not Donald versus Hillary; rather it's about denialism versus defection and denunciation versus renunciation.

The poster boy for denialism is House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose speech in Cleveland last month made him seem like he had wandered in from a different political convention. He gave an earnest, optimistic, forward-looking speech, a stark contrast to virtually everything else uttered from the podium that week. Ryan has seemed walled off from the actual political freak show going on around him. Occasionally reality intrudes and either he has to admit that Donald Trump is a racist or, as he said Thursday, that Trump's attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan are "beyond the pale." But he quickly reassures himself and anyone listening that said beyond-the-pale bigot is the most qualified choice for the presidency.

The case of the Khans is both the perfect illustration and, perhaps, catalyst for the destruction of the brief-lived GOP mainstream consensus regarding Trump. While an admirable subset of Republicans has remained steadily #NeverTrump even through his ascendance to party leadership, much of the establishment has adapted variations of an ignore-the-problem approach to Trump. Many condemn the sin whilst ignoring the very existence of the sinner. You'd think Lord Voldemort was running for president given how reluctant some Republicans seem to be to mention his name. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example, defended the Khans without actually mentioning Trump, as if they had been subject to some sort of free-floating assault. Ryan's initial reaction was much the same.

Some did mention the nominee of course. Arizona Sen. John McCain issued a stern rebuke: "I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump's statement," he said. "I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates." Never mind that the remarks represent the views of the Republican Party's most important candidate. New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte said she was "appalled" at Trump's feud with a Gold Star family. And Ryan, days after trying to support the Khans without mentioning Trump made his "beyond the pale" remarks in a radio interview Thursday, belatedly scoring his presidential nominee so that "people don't make the mistake of thinking we think like that." Where could they possibly get such an idea?

But here's the key thing: Do Ryan, McCain and Ayotte support Donald Trump for the presidency? Unwaveringly. When forced to answer for Trump by name the GOP formula has been denounce but don't renounce. (And Trump only underscores their fecklessness, refusing to endorse Ryan and McCain in their primaries and suggesting that Ayotte is "weak" and disloyal.) On one level their basic political calculation is understandable: They need Trump voters in order to survive in November; but they are in danger of disappearing into a growing chasm between those voters and everyone else.

-snip-

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-05/republican-defections-from-trump-accelerate?emailed=1&src=usn_thereport

[DFW]

1. Even if Ryan, McCain and Ayotte "don't think like that"

The people who vote(d) them into office DO think like that.

I don't envy any of them, but all three of them chose to walk this path.