http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/presidential-campaign/279356-memo-to-bushes-other-gop-holdouts-get-on-the-trumpMay 10, 2016, 12:15 pm
Memo to Bushes, other GOP holdouts: Get on the Trump Train
By Darrell Issa
To hear the political media put it, Republicans all across the country are seething with rage, shaking their fists at each other and determined to drive the GOP apart.
Talk about the wish being the father to the thought – and the reporting.
Four months on the campaign trail stumping in seven states for Sen. Marco Rubio revealed to me that while Republicans are full of disappointment about Washington, it took the form of an upbeat and resolute determination. I met and observed thousands of voters during the primary. I didn’t see one outburst.
While many voters told me they had different first choices than Sen. Rubio, there was one frontrunner they wouldn’t consider voting for in November.
Donald Trump? Not even close. Hillary Clinton.
These ordinary people know one big thing and seem to grasp what a population of experts in Washington won’t: Hillary doesn’t just represent Clintonian evasion, double-speak and corner-cutting, but a stop-at-nothing will to power.
There are some Republicans, however, who are visibly enraged and pledging to rend the party in two, if not four. But these are not heartland voters so much as Beltway doyennes – the consultant and donor classes, established opinion writers, think tank officials and other Washington wise men.
If you’re looking for the stereotypical angry white male, look no further.
They are pledging to never support the GOP nominee, walk out of the Cleveland convention and even run a counter-campaign with a separate Republican candidate as a third-party protest vote. Makes for some interesting political math. How does half of a half make us whole?
Will their hurt feelings really be salved by helping to elect Hillary Clinton? Will their admiration of Burke and Buckley be advanced by rewarding brazen corruption with the keys to the White House and control of the Supreme Court for a generation or more?
I don’t dismiss their strong views, but I hope they’ll soon come to their senses. I am particularly hopeful that the Bush family of two presidents and a successful governor will reconsider and support the party that continuously supported them during trying times in the past.
Republicans need to step back, take stock and think carefully about the stakes in this election.
Have we forgotten that dozens of FBI agents are working on or have worked on the investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s illegal email practices?
Those many agents have no doubt grappled with unavoidable facts: Mrs. Clinton, her closest political advisers (and even some veteran State Department officials) were made aware of the legal violations and national security risks associated with her home-brew email server, worked to circumvent government rules, and after failing to do so, just ignored the law and attempted to cover it up.
And yet, an unprecedented criminal investigation of the Democrat front runner (as well as everything else we know about her shady, backchannel dealings on with former cronies and on the financial behalf of the Clinton Foundation) essentially hid in plain sight for months– obscured and ignored by the clever commercials and hurried hashtags of Republican consultants trying to defeat the GOP candidate they like least.
Elections are choices, and this year provides as clear an option between two candidates as any time in recent memory.
Donald Trump is the obvious choice for every American suffering from eight years of disastrous economic policies and anti-job regulations that have caused continuous pain to tens of millions of people. He is also the only option left for those truly harmed by Obamacare or alarmed at a failed foreign policy that has weakened our military, betrayed our allies and clearly made us less safe at home and around the world.
This time requires updated thinking about our party and its place in American governance. As Trump makes his unifying trip Wednesday to Capitol Hill, Republicans need to get real and admit hard truths.
It is the presumptive Democrat nominee – not the Republican one – who is the personification of corrupt and unaccountable Washington with a record of abuse of power not seen since Watergate and, in my view, far before. Whatever direction a President Trump would take, it’s a different and better one than the course we are certain Hillary Clinton will travel every day.
