Ms. Collins revealed her decision in an opinion column for The Washington Post published Monday evening, saying that Mr. Trump’s proclivity for bullying and invective made it impossible for her to support him. She said she believed having Mr. Trump as president would make “an already perilous world” even more dangerous.
.. Faulting Mr. Trump for a “constant stream of cruel comments and his inability to admit error or apologize,” Ms. Collins specifically mentioned his attacks on Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge born in Indiana whom Mr. Trump derided for his “Mexican heritage”; Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a slain soldier; and a New York Times reporter whom Mr. Trump seemed to mock for a physical disability.
Why is everyone surprised Ted Cruz didn’t endorse Trump
But why is everyone so surprised? Trump nicknames him “Lyin’ Ted,” argues he’s a Canadian ineligible for the presidency, retweets an image mocking his wife’s appearance, and suggests his dad had a role in killing JFK, and never apologizes for any of it . . . and the Trump team is surprised Cruz didn’t endorse him?
Trump Campaign Denounces John Kasich in Ohio, Where Convention Begins
.. Addressing reporters at a breakfast on Monday, Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s de facto campaign manager, accused Mr. Kasich of acting “petulant” for refusing to support Mr. Trump following the governor’s defeat in the Republicans’ presidential nominating process.
“He’s embarrassing his party in Ohio,” Mr. Manafort said of Mr. Kasich, calling the governor’s chief political strategist the culprit behind Mr. Kasich’s strategy of not endorsing Mr. Trump. “Negotiations broke down because John Weaver thinks that John Kasich will have a better chance to be president by not supporting Donald Trump.”
.. also pointedly brought up Mr. Manafort’s history of working with contentious foreign leaders.
“Manafort’s problem, after all those years on the lam with thugs and autocrats, is that he can’t recognize principle and integrity,” Mr. Weaver wrote in an email. “I do congratulate him though on a great pivot at the start of the convention after such a successful vice-presidential launch. He has brought great professionalism, direct from Kiev, to Trump world.”
But Mr. Kasich, who will not appear onstage this week, is not just another Republican skeptic of Mr. Trump: he is also the two-term governor of the hotly contested swing state where the convention is taking place and where the election may be decided in November.
Recognizing this, Mr. Manafort used his remarks at the Bloomberg Politics-sponsored breakfast to assail Mr. Kasich, while also driving a wedge between the governor and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.
Seven Reasons It Made Sense for Donald Trump to pick Mike Pence
The running mate’s role is to support and amplify the boss’s message, not to usurp it. As Gingrich demonstrated on Thursday night, with his call for American Muslims to be subjected to a Sharia-law test, he’s not one of nature’s number twos.
.. Many of the potential problems with picking Gingrich also apply to the New Jersey governor, who is loud and domineering, and has an equally dismal approval rating: thirty-four per cent
.. Trump’s only realistic, or semi-realistic, chance of getting to two hundred and seventy electoral votes is to storm through the Midwest and the Rust Belt, racking up huge majorities of white votes. To this end, his ideal choice would have been John Kasich, the popular governor of Ohio, but Kasich didn’t want the job. Nor did Rob Portman, the Ohio senator who served in the Bush Administration, or Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. And no one in Michigan or Pennsylvania was particularly suitable, either. That left Pence
.. In May, after wrapping up the nomination, he said, “This is called the Republican Party, not the Conservative Party.” But, like John McCain and Mitt Romney before him, Trump ultimately had to come to terms with the nature of the beast he is trying to ride to the White House.
.. Selecting Pence, a former head of the Republican Study Group on Capitol Hill, sends a signal that Trump is willing to work with the Party establishment and listen to what it says.
.. Ryan released a statement saying that there could be “no better choice for our vice-presidential candidate.”
.. Most people who take civil rights and the Constitution seriously are already aghast at the prospect of a Trump Presidency. Is there anyone out there who was willing to look past Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims, a resumption of torture, and the deportation of eleven million undocumented workers, but who will not vote for the Republican ticket because of Pence’s support for an Indiana law that allowed businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians? Perhaps such people exist, but I doubt there are very many.