Trump-backing Republicans better get their answers ready - By Jennifer Rubin
I've posted several of Rubin's Posts from her Washington Post blog, below: pick and choose the one(s) you want to read. I enjoy reading her, so long as her target(s) is/are the GOP and/or Trump - DonViejo
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
The hundreds of elected Republicans still backing Donald Trump, some enthusiastically, better start prepping for the interviews — the ones after the election. We’ve got a bunch of questions:
You claimed Trump was better than Hillary Clinton. Considering his racist, misogynist and hateful comments; unsteady temperament; pathological lying; dearth of knowledge; constant rhetorical blunders; association with apologists for Vladimir Putin and affection for dictators, is that really true?
Even if you thought Clinton was worse than Trump, why did you not do everything possible to support dissenting delegates at the Republican National Convention and/or support the Libertarian candidate or independent candidate Evan McMullin?
If David Duke had been nominated, would you have endorsed him? Why not?
Did it ever occur to you that Trump was unfit for office? When did you first realize it? Why didn’t you speak up?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/08/10/trump-backing-republicans-better-get-their-answers-ready/?utm_term=.9564164a55e4&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
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Saving the Senate is now the GOP’s biggest problem
Assuming that Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, Democrats can win the Senate majority with a net four-seat pickup (Sen. Tim Kaine as VP would then break 50-50 tie votes). With Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) enjoying double-digit leads against both weak Democratic contenders, Florida likely remains in the “R” column. By contrast, the chances of Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) winning in states that will go overwhelmingly Democratic at the top of the ticket are diminishing. Ask GOP operatives and fundraisers (other than the Koch brothers in Wisconsin), and they privately will say these seats almost certainly cannot be saved.
If all this holds true, Republicans can only lose one more seat (or lose two but pick up Nevada) without ceding the Senate majority. If the presidential race becomes, as is quite possible, a runaway, the likelihood of holding at least two of the most critical Senate seats (Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire) or at least one with a pickup in Nevada becomes nearly impossible.
GOP insiders are keeping a stiff upper lip in Nevada. They argue that Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) a doctor in the Army Reserves who served three tours of active military duty, is a top-tier candidate running against an untested opponent, Catherine Cortez Masto. The race is essentially a dead heat; Charlie Cook rates it a tossup.
The GOP candidates are attempting to localize their races (e.g. focus on anti-opioid legislation) and slam their opponents (e.g. Sen. Rob Portman is going after Democrat Ted Strickland’s record as governor). Outside groups such as American Crossroads are helping out with their own negative barrage against the Democratic candidates, but unlike the GOP incumbents themselves — who would prefer never to mention the presidential race — the third-party groups also are straining to keep Clinton’s negatives high as a way to keep the race at the top of the ticket reasonably close. They fear that if Clinton gets a free pass and, say, builds up a 20-point lead in Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey, no matter how good a candidate, won’t be able to hold on.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/08/10/saving-the-senate-is-now-the-gops-biggest-problem/?utm_term=.f0e5b8c2471d&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
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Trump apologists struggle to explain the inexplicable
Donald Trump is so maddeningly opaque and incoherent that a cottage industry of interpreters has sprung up to tell us on a daily basis what he said or meant to say. In the wake of his assertion on Tuesday that “Second Amendment people” could take care of Hillary Clinton (to prevent her from appointing judges to limit their rights), we got all sorts of explanations.
His widely mocked spokeswoman Katrina Pierson argued, “Just before that he was saying — as you said — ‘what could happen.’ He doesn’t want that to happen.” So he was predicting violence, not encouraging it?
Trump’s communications director had a different take. In a written statement entitled “Trump Campaign Statement on Dishonest Media,” Jason Miller (who when working for Sen. Ted Cruz used to call Trump pathological) asserted, “It’s called the power of unification — 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump.” But Trump was talking about stopping Clinton from picking judges after she was elected.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suggested that it was a joke gone awry. One wonders when Ryan will take Trump seriously enough to address the risk, albeit diminishing daily, that Trump might make it to the White House — and destroy the GOP along the way.
Trump’s hapless VP pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, took a different approach at a rally later in the day. “It seems like every single day the national press latches on to some other issue about my running mate, just each and every day of the week,” he whined. In other words, stop listening so carefully to what the guy running for president is saying!
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/08/10/trump-apologists-struggle-to-explain-the-inexplicable/?utm_term=.6fa46e686452&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
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The anti-Trump GOP stampede begins
Already this week, a letter from 50 respected Republican foreign-policy gurus announced that they would not support Donald Trump; Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) wrote an op-ed declaring that she would not vote for Trump; and Trump once again roiled the race when he told a packed rally: “By the way, and if [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. The Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
The Clinton team, not surprisingly, took this as an invitation to commit violence. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Well, let me say if someone else said that outside of the hall, he’d be in the back of a police wagon now, with the Secret Service questioning him.”
Whatever Trump meant, it was confirmation that he has never “pivoted” to become a credible presidential candidate. Collectively it has been a horrible start to another week of agony for Trump apologists. Trump’s behavior is prompting some Republicans to conclude that he does not want to win or, in anticipation of a November loss, is suffering some sort of personal breakdown.
Big-name Republicans, smaller-name Republicans, conservative foreign-policy gurus, you name it — they are racing to the exits, no longer willing to maintain the fiction that Trump could be president.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/08/10/the-anti-trump-gop-stampede-begins/?utm_term=.45b8f493d227&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
