Donald Trump's march to the White House encountered fierce resistance from his own party Thursday as senior lawmakers hesitated to endorse him, party luminaries said they'd skip his nominating convention and others pondered the potential of a third-party bid.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said he's
"just not ready" to support Trump, becoming the highest elected Republican official to raise concerns about Trump since he became the party's likely standard-bearer this week. [...]
CNN reached out to 16 Republican elected officials, leaders and major fundraisers associated with former Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. Speaking on background, none of them said they were planning to go to this summer's Republican convention. They didn't say they would vote for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. But they said they were not yet supporting Trump.
Philip Rucker, Paul Kane and Robert Costa at The Washington Post:
Ryan’s comments, which came as a surprise to some close allies, deepened the divide in a party now facing a painful reckoning about Trump. The GOP’s only two living presidents — George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — said they would not endorse him, while its past two nominees — Mitt Romney and John McCain — said they did not plan to attend Trump’s nominating convention this summer in Cleveland. McCain, however, said he would support Trump and has offered to counsel him on foreign policy.
Trump was defiant in his response to Ryan, offering a firm defense of his candidacy and asserting that he has a mandate from Republican voters. In a notable departure from his handling of previous feuds, Trump did not insult Ryan personally.
Noah Millman at The Week examines how the Republican Party will try to mold Trump into a general election candidate:
[T]he GOP can still try to convince itself — with some evidence — that Trump will prove exceedingly malleable policy-wise. After all, he doesn't think about policy much, and surely believes that his voters aren't primarily motivated by issues but by his own personal awesomeness. And on many issues Trump is far less-heterodox than his rhetoric suggests. Consider Trump's tax plan, or his health care plan. Trump's efforts look like more amateurish and exaggerated versions of precisely the sorts of "plans" that GOP candidates have been proposing for the past several cycles. They involve enormous tax cuts for the top income brackets and corporations, and ripping up ObamaCare to replace it with nothing.
Timothy Egan at The New York Times looks at Trump’s unsurprising disavowal of some of his positions:
Etch A Sketch? That was Mitt Romney’s plan. (Such a choker, Mitt.) For Trump, it’ll be more like a remodel, get rid of the dirty carpet, the retro-without-being-camp décor, polish the edges. Soften. Less time with “Fox and Friends” and the conspiracy nut jobs on talk radio, and more time with “The View.” Ladies — he adores ’em. The press will come to him on bended knee, as NBC News did this week in their pander-cast from Trump Tower.
Still, if you were disliked by two-thirds of American women, 73 percent of nonwhites, 70 percent of voters under age 35 and 67 percent of college graduates, you’d feel some urgency to dial back his inner Sarah Palin.
So we saw the man who killed the Party of Lincoln in all his babelicious-loving glory Tuesday night, the first of 188 days until the general election. He can’t possibly take back everything. How do you replace xenophobia, racism, misogyny and factual malpractice with “we’re going to love each other,” as he said after winning Indiana?
Simple. Count on American amnesia, our opioid.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post explains how Trump’s attempts to moderate his positions make him a typical politician:
Trump may have a short political résumé, but he is still a quintessential politician. Arguably, he is the most politician-y politician who has ever politicked.
Consider the cardinal sins of the political class: pandering, lying, flip-flopping and overpromising.
Trump has partaken of every single one, and transformed each nearly into an art form.
Here’s Paul Krugman’s take on how the media may cover the general election:
How will the news media handle the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? I suspect I know the answer — and it’s going to be deeply frustrating. But maybe, just maybe, flagging some common journalistic sins in advance can limit the damage. So let’s talk about what can and probably will go wrong in coverage — but doesn’t have to.
First, and least harmful, will be the urge to make the election seem closer than it is, if only because a close race makes a better story. You can already see this tendency in suggestions that the startling outcome of the fight for the Republican nomination somehow means that polls and other conventional indicators of electoral strength are meaningless. [...] one candidate is engaged in wildly irresponsible fantasy while the other is being quite careful with her numbers. But beware of news analyses that, in the name of “balance,” downplay this contrast. [...]
Finally, I can almost guarantee that we’ll see attempts to sanitize the positions and motives of Trump supporters, to downplay the racism that is at the heart of the movement and pretend that what voters really care about are the priorities of D.C. insiders — a process I think of as “centrification.”
On a final note, don’t miss Eugene Robinson’s excellent analysis on the future of the Republican Party:
The party belongs to Trump now, just as Rome belonged to the barbarians, and GOP politicians have to decide whether to fall in line or take up arms against the new order. [...]
What does “I support the nominee” buy you? Trump’s allegation that Mexican immigrants are “rapists.” His promise to deport 11 million people living here without papers. His pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country. His misogyny. His bigotry. His willful ignorance of foreign and domestic policy. And much, much more.
The emerging Republican message: We’re all Visigoths now.