{"id":29312,"date":"2018-04-23T00:16:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T00:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29312"},"modified":"2018-04-23T00:17:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T00:17:06","slug":"gop-pols-hedge-their-support-for-trump-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29312","title":{"rendered":"GOP pols hedge their support for Trump … so far"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It’s rare for politicians of the same party as the president to withhold their support for a president who declares his intention to seek re-election.<\/p>\n

That is what is happening within the Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney<\/a>, who wants to represent Utah in the U.S. Senate, says he cannot commit to supporting Donald Trump, who Romney once described as a “phony” and a “fraud.” Same for Sen. John Cornyn of Texas; ditto for Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; also ditto for lame-duck House Speaker Paul Ryan, also of Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Hey, what’s going on here?<\/p>\n

Is the president,\u00a0 um, toxic<\/em> to Republicans? Are his GOP brethren afraid to get too close to the guy who is the titular head of their political party?<\/p>\n

Hmm. Maybe they’re looking at recent history.<\/p>\n

Trump backed a sitting U.S. senator from Alabama, Luther Strange, only to watch him lose that state’s GOP primary to Roy Moore, the guy accused by several women of sexual assault; Trump then threw his backing behind Moore, who ended up losing to Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones in the special election.<\/p>\n

Trump then backed a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in Pennsylvania. Oops! Then the GOP candidate lost to the Democrat.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking the Republicans might be taking stock of the president’s actual<\/em> political clout, looking past the braggadocio that flies out of the president’s mouth.<\/p>\n

Trump boasts about all the “winning” he has brought to government and to public policy. The way I look at it, he isn’t winning<\/em> nearly as much as he would like us all to believe.<\/p>\n

The act of “winning” in Trump’s world bears no resemblance to the reality the president is facing as he confronts what is looking more and more like a difficult ride through the 2018 midterm election.<\/p>\n

That, of course, presumes the president is able to discern the politically obvious. Of that I am not at all certain.<\/p>\n\n

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It’s rare for politicians of the same party as the president to withhold their support for a president who declares his intention to seek re-election. That is what is happening within the Republican Party. Mitt Romney, who wants to represent Utah in the U.S. Senate, says he cannot commit to supporting Donald Trump, who Romney … Continue reading GOP pols hedge their support for Trump … so far<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1424,1941,2183,3101,4195],"class_list":["post-29312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-gop","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-mitt-romney","tag-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29314,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29312\/revisions\/29314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}