As Hill Republicans stagger back to the Capitol this week, many are coming to terms with what still hadn’t sunk in when they recessed 10 days ago: Donald Trump is their nominee.
“Donald Trump was not my first choice. He wasn’t my second choice or third or fourth choice. I have lots have differences with Donald Trump and lots of problems with him, but I am absolutely in the ‘never Hillary Clinton’ camp,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who is running for re-election told the Dom Giordano Program last week. “I guess this is where we are.”
In the last week, Trump has not only emerged as the presumptive nominee, but any last illusions that the nomination could be wrangled from him in a high-stakes convention floor fight have shattered as the last standing competitors, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, bowed out of the race. Out of a field of 17 candidates, voters picked Trump.
GOP leaders expected they’d have at least until the California primary, another full month before the reckoning, but instead, the rocky path to Republican unity begins now.
Trump is expected to huddle with Republican leaders this week in Washington just days after House Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN he was “just not ready” to support Trump as his nominee. Ryan extended the invitation for Trump to speak with the House leadership team in D.C. Thursday morning. Then, Ryan and Trump plan to sit down separately Thursday with National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus who has been playing moderator between the two party leaders. As of late last week, nothing had been officially scheduled between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump.
Trump’s blunt and off-putting tone is just one of the many reasons lawmakers may be skittish to embrace their new nominee. On a handful of occasions both McConnell and Ryan have had to to answer for Trump’s extreme policy proposals and language. At one point, Ryan had to disavow Trump’s hesitancy to rebuke former KKK leader David Duke. On another, McConnell was forced to distance himself and his conference from Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.
Trump is about to come up against a harsh reality. On Capitol Hill, hill leaders have bigger priorities than making sure Trump gets to the White House.
McConnell has a vulnerable majority to defend, and his crop of candidates is running for re-election in Democratic-leaning or swing states like Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio where Trump’s policies may not sit well with independent or moderate voters. Polls show Trump trailing with women, Hispanics and black voters –all groups Republicans needed to make up ground with in 2016– to hold on to the Senate. Senate prognosticators have moved several races that once were considered a long shot for Dems closer to the Democrats’ direction.
On the House side, Ryan also has a majority to defend even if it is a less fragile one. Still, Ryan had hoped his rise as speaker would empower him to set a policy agenda and sell his conservative plan to voters. Trump, meanwhile, the party’s standard bearer at the moment, doesn’t even seem to speak the same conservative language. Ryan has pushed for a trade bill. Trump has spent his campaign railing against free trade. On the issue of abortion, Trump’s record is inconsistent. On health care, Trump has said he wants to repeal Obamacare, but some of the options he’s looking to replace it resemble universal health care, an even more abhorrent option for conservatives. And on entitlements, Trump tells voters he wants to keep them as they are while Ryan has spent his tenure in Congress pitching ways to scale them back.
While it is difficult to imagine Ryan not coming around on Trump, he had been planning to roll out a Republican agenda regardless of who the nominee was, and Ryan’s conservative vision isn’t just at odds with Trump’s, they practically collide.
Ryan and McConnell are hardly the only member of Congress whom Trump has yet to impress. The GOP’s embrace of Trump so far has been tepid at best.
Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) and Rep. Anne Wagner (R-MO), lawmakers facing re-election, both said Trump had to “earn” their vote.
Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Dean Heller (R-NV), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) flatly declared they won’t be endorsing Trump.
“I am not going where Donald Trump is taking the party,” Graham said on CNN Friday. “I may just pass. I may just write somebody in. I don’t know.”
Even a handful of the senators who have gotten to ‘yes’ on Trump seem to have arrived their reluctantly.
“I’ve always said I would support the nominee of the party, the party of Ronald Reagan and Teddy Roosevelt. I have strong disagreements with Mr. Trump on a number of issues. I believe four years of Hillary Clinton will be an absolute disaster for this nation, as far as national security is concerned,” McCain told an Arizona radio program.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) held onto his support for Kasich’s candidacy long after it was viable and even hours before he dropped out of the race to keep from having to say he backed Trump.
“As Rob has been saying for the past year, he intends to support the Republican nominee,” Portman’s campaign manager Corry Bliss, said in a statement.
Trump’s campaign has been meeting with members of Congress and supporters on the Hill for weeks now building up relationships and trying to quell concerns that Trump isn’t presidential, but those meetings largely included members who were receptive to Trump’s overall message. This week will be the first real test of whether Trump can quell concerns within the party that Trump is a damaged vessel for the conservative message.
