Don’t be fooled by the GOP’s grandstanding — everyone, from presidential candidates to vulnerable incumbent senators, is still #EventuallyTrump.
Cruz and Kasich toed the #EventuallyTrump line at last night’s CNN town hall by not explicitly saying they will still support the Republican nominee as did Trump. As presidential and senate candidates alike bend over backwards to avoid saying that their party won’t converge to support the eventual GOP nominee, presumed nominee Donald Trump is the only one who has ripped up his pledge to support whoever the party chooses.
Even this morning, Cruz surrogate Scott Walker said he’s confident he and the other candidates, including Cruz and Kasich, will ultimately support the GOP nominee.
This is the worst case scenario for RNC Chair Reince Preibus. In a December poll, 68 percent of Trump supporters said they’d follow him if he launches a third-party bid in the general — a threat he still has on the table if the GOP doesn’t treat him nicely.
Yesterday, we highlighted the growing list of incumbent senators supporting Trump below. With Cruz, Kasich, and Walker continuing their grandstanding on the campaign trail, they – like the rest of the party – are still #EventuallyTrump.
On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 1:09 PM, AmericanBridge Press <[email protected]> wrote:
Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s obstructionist Supreme Court master plan “has been a disaster.” American voters want their senators to do their job and act on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, but the McConnell-led Republican conference is refusing to follow through on its constitutional obligations.
Former NRSC Chair and Kansas Senator Jerry Moran last week broke ranks and admitted that the Senate should act, but McConnell’s for now committed to holding his obstructionist line — even if doing so means electoral loses for his conference’s most vulnerable members, whose constituents are pressuring them to act.
For now, Senators Kelly Ayotte, Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, John McCain, Rob Portman, and Pat Toomey continue to refuse to do their jobs. They’ve said that they’ll support Donald Trump as GOP nominee, and now they’re stalling for a Donald Trump Supreme Court.
Business Insider: The verdict is in: The GOP’s Supreme Court plan so far has been a disasterBy Allan Smith, 3/26/16
Most Americans disagree with the Republican-controlled Senate’s plan to temporarily avoid filling the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.
Apparently, so do some of the party’s own senators.
“I would rather have you complaining to me that I voted wrong on nominating somebody than saying I’m not doing my job,” Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said during a meeting with constituents this week, according to a local Kansas newspaper.
Moran’s statement was the latest setback to the overall GOP plan, which pledges to avoid even holding hearings on Judge Merrick Garland, US President Barack Obama’s recent nomination to the vacant Supreme Court seat.
Two other GOP senators have called for action on Garland. And a majority of Americans disagree with the GOP’s platform of refusing to hold a hearing, multiple polls show.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 52% of respondents are in favor of Garland not only getting a hearing, but being confirmed to the Supreme Court. Just 29% are not in favor of Garland’s confirmation, while 19% hold no opinion. Among Republicans who participated in the poll, 33% want to see Garland confirmed, while 51% are not in favor — a surprisingly small gap when compared to the 75%-11% gap in favor of confirmation for Democrats polled.
Garland’s margins are more favorable than Justice Elena Kagan when she was nominated by Obama for a seat in 2010, per Gallup. Back then, 46% of respondents were in favor of her confirmation while 32% were against it and 22% held no opinion.
Another poll, this one conducted by CBS News/The New York Times, found that 53% of respondents wanted to see the Senate hold a hearing for Garland before Obama’s term is up, while 42% were against it. Even more striking, a majority of Republicans — a 52% to 45% margin — felt that the GOP wing of the Senate was refusing to hold a hearing for political reasons and did not have the best interest of the country in mind.
One final poll, this time from Monmouth University, found that margin to be even wider. A surprising 62% of Republicans felt their party’s Senate representatives were simply playing politics while just 28% felt the plan to thwart a hearing for Garland has the best interest of the country in mind. Overall, 69% of respondents in that poll — all registered voters — were in favor of a hearing for Garland. Just 25% opposed a hearing before the end of Obama’s term.
While it’s true that a majority of Republicans still agree with the GOP leadership’s platform regarding Garland, the numbers show a legitimate division within the party’s base as well as the nation overall.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has led the stand against holding a hearing for Garland and insisted the next president should be the one to fill the seat, which opened after Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent death.
“The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration,” McConnell said last Wednesday. “The next president may also nominate someone very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy.”
But cracks have already begun to form within McConnell’s party. Some GOP senators have agreed to meet with Garland, while others have said they’d push his nomination through during the lame-duck session if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were to win the presidency.
Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois even said his fellow GOP senators should “man up” and hold a vote for Garland, while Moran called for a break with his party’s leadership as well.
“I can’t imagine the president has or will nominate somebody that meets my criteria, but I have a job to do,” he said. “I think the process ought to go forward.”
Published: Mar 30, 2016