‘I can’t imagine a truly credible person agreeing to be his running mate.’
John Weaver, who served as the campaign strategist for Kasich’s presidential bid, was more blunt: “I can’t imagine a truly credible person agreeing to be his running mate, because it would be the end of his or her political career.”
.. the short list is so short. Multiple high-level Republican sources said it is topped by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions a distant third and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin also in the mix.
.. But there’s another, simpler reason why these two white men, both more representative of the Republican Party’s past than its future, have emerged as finalists: They actually want the job.
.. She’s expressed a willingness to join the ticket and could help the presumptive nominee with women, three-quarters of whom disapprove of him, according to an ABC News poll.
.. Trump has also courted a number of Southern governors, including Nathan Deal of Georgia, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Bill Haslam of Tennessee and Phil Bryant of Mississippi.
.. Tim Scott has also drawn some buzz as a potential pick. The first-term South Carolina senator is well respected in the chamber and would bring diversity to Trump’s ticket as the sole African-American GOP senator.
.. with U.S. allies and the country’s foreign policy overall, some Republicans are clamoring for names of potential secretaries of defense and state, too.
.. “Trump would be well served to identify a list of senior statesmen that he might appoint to those positions,” said one Republican senator who’s pledged to support the nominee.
Plus, it would give the media and the GOP something to talk about besides the latest Trump controversy.
.. Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is practically despondent over Trump these days, after visiting with the presumptive nominee
The 5 Types of Trump-Averse Republicans
congressional Republicans divided into five loose categories about the problem that is Donald J. Trump.
.. 1. The Fast Walkers
.. 2. The Grumps
.. “I don’t know that I really have a lot to say,” adding that he had tried to advise Mr. Trump and was “discouraged by the results.”
.. 3. The McConnells
.. Mr. McConnell preemptively cuts off discussion by saying things like, “I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential candidates today.”
.. 4. The Free Speakers
.. 5. The Vaguely-Upset-But-What-Can-You-Do
.. Mr. Trump has created a feedback loop in which he says increasingly outrageous and at times incoherent things about national security, immigration and other issues and Republicans are forced to answer for it.
.. “Don’t talk. Please, be quiet,” he said. “Just be quiet, to the leaders, because they have to get tougher, they have to get sharper, they have to get smarter, and we have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me just do it by myself.”
.. His top surrogates remain Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Representative Lee Zeldin of New York, with no sign of newcomers to the list.
.. “If Donald Trump continues to conduct himself in a way that’s unbecoming of a nominee, let alone a president,” said Rory Cooper, a senior adviser to the #NeverTrump PAC, “then delegates and party leaders in Cleveland should be empowered to open the convention, just as Democrats are able to do. If there is no such mechanism, then you are essentially saying there is no unacceptable line Trump can cross.”
The Paul Ryan Delusion
There are essentially two Republican parties right now: the Party of Donald J. Trump and the Party of House Speaker Paul Ryan—who has, nonetheless, endorsed Trump for President. One of the ways in which members of the Ryan faction delude themselves is by believing that Ryan’s policies would dominate if Trump were President and Ryan remained Speaker of the House.
.. Ryan noted that when he took over as Speaker, last fall, his top priority was to fashion a detailed Republican policy agenda. The idea was to ignore the circus of the Republican Presidential primaries, which was sure to push the candidates into making reckless statements, and instead to have waiting at the end of the process a sober general-election platform that the Republican nominee could embrace.
.. This instrumental view of the Presidency—that a Republican in the White House would serve more or less as an Autopen for Ryan’s ideas—rested, even apart from Trump, on two shaky assumptions.
The first was that Ryan could do a better job forging consensus than John Boehner, his predecessor
.. Ryan’s second assumption was that any new Republican President would respect a historical shift in the way that Republicans think about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
.. But in the Obama years, when Republicans’ base of power became more firmly rooted in Congress and, in their view, Barack Obama expanded the powers of the Presidency, Republicans became loud advocates of the primacy of the legislative branch.
.. But it’s an especially absurd assumption when it comes to Trump, who has displayed authoritarian instincts and has argued that he will exceed Obama in using the powers of the executive branch.
.. Ryan called for “a security test and not a religious test,” and pointed to a report on national security with sixty-seven recommendations that he had released just last Thursday.
A Week for All Time
They will remember, a century from now, who stood up to the tyrant Donald Trump and who found it expedient to throw out the most basic American values — the “Vichy Republicans,” as the historian Ken Burns called them in his Stanford commencement speech.
The shrug from Mitch McConnell, the twisted explanation of Paul Ryan, who said Trump is a racist and a xenophobe, but he’s ours — party before country. As well, the duck-and-hide Republicans, so quick to whip out their pocket copy of the Constitution, now nowhere to be seen when the foundation of that same document is under assault by the man carrying their banner.
.. but it’s just a role
.. the time when the man leading the party of Lincoln suggested that a sitting president was a traitor, somehow sympathetic to Islamic nihilists who slaughter innocent Americans. Trump implied it. Then he banned a newspaper for its headline about it.
.. “Man up,” wrote the Republican strategist Rick Wilson. “Show courage. Say what’s in your hearts; he’s insane. He’s poison. He’s doomed. He’s killing the party.”
..Seal this week. Put it in a time capsule. Teach it. History will remember. But come November, will we?