For weeks, Senate Republicans delighted in the misery of their Democratic counterparts. The political story of the summer \u2014 whether President Biden would back down from his run at a second term \u2014 left GOP senators smiling and away from the media\u2019s glaring spotlight on their foibles.<\/p>\n
But the tables quickly turned. Their party\u2019s presidential nominee recently returned to his natural form and lashed out against Vice President Harris in divisive terms that had little basis in truth. Republicans went right back into the political PTSD of the Donald Trump era, mouthing the same platitudes that they grasped onto during his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe needs to focus on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,\u201d Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Was she comfortable with Trump\u2019s rhetoric? \u201cHe needs to focus on the Biden-Harris policies. That\u2019s the successful pathway to November,\u201d Capito said.<\/p>\n
If that\u2019s the path to success, why does Trump instead dive right into attacks on race instead of policy?<\/p>\n
Capito let out a roaring laugh that lasted six whole seconds, incapable of answering the question \u2014 or unwilling to share her honest answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a really good mother and grandmother. I can\u2019t answer that one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans have always had the strangest relationship with Trump. The traditional Reagan-Bush ethos remains strong in their caucus even as the populist, nativist elements have come to dominate the House Republicans.<\/p>\n
Republicans remember how Trump\u2019s grievance-filled stumping for their two candidates who lost in the early 2021 Georgia runoff elections handed control of the Senate to Democrats. Many blamed Trump for inciting the Capitol riot \u2014 although just seven voted to convict him in the February 2021 impeachment trial.<\/p>\n
After growing tired of constantly responding to his crazy tweets or wild statements during his time in the Oval Office, Senate Republicans were reluctant to endorse Trump\u2019s campaign last year.<\/p>\n
Yet, as Trump marched through the GOP primaries without any serious competition, and as voters soured on Biden amid questions about his capacity to serve, Senate Republicans embraced what they considered to be a certain victor, especially since he led them to believe that he was a different candidate.<\/p>\n
They particularly embraced Trump\u2019s call for \u201cunity\u201d after the July 13 attempt on his life in Butler, Pa., which some pundits declared to be the end of any Democratic chances of success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that one good thing that comes out of this tragedy is a renewed sense of what unites us, a renewed respect for our fellow Americans,\u201d Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who previously clashed with Trump, wrote in a July 19 op-ed distributed in his state.<\/p>\n
The accommodations came before then. When Trump met at the Senate GOP political headquarters in June, he twice shook hands with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who went 3\u00bd years without speaking to Trump after the 2020 elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cTremendous unity,\u201d Trump said after that meeting.<\/p>\n
Later that day the ex-president even publicly backed one of his harshest Republican critics, former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, in his Senate race.<\/p>\n
After Harris locked up the support to replace Biden on the top of the ticket, House and Senate GOP leaders even cautioned their rank-and-file to drop any mentions of Harris as a \u201cDEI\u201d candidate. Trump wanted to focus on policy issues such as inflation and border security.<\/p>\n
By 3 p.m. Wednesday, all those hopes for a unity-and-policy-centric campaign came undone.<\/p>\n
Trump had just used his appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference to falsely question whether Harris hid her Black identity and accuse her of being only Indian. He mocked a prominent journalist as \u201cthat woman\u201d and again praised the insurrectionists serving prison time for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He continued to tout those claims in a rally that same evening.<\/p>\n
A couple of reporters followed Thune down a hallway before one politely told him to stop, that he was going to get a ton of questions about these comments. He read Thune the verbatim of Trump\u2019s most incendiary remarks.<\/p>\n
\u201cUm, the campaign is \u2014 needs to be \u2014 mostly about the issues. There\u2019s plenty to talk about, and I just think that\u2019s where the focus needs to be,\u201d Thune said, never addressing the substance of Trump\u2019s assertions.<\/p>\n
In the flip of a switch, Republicans were back on defense, reassuming the same roles they had been playing in years past.<\/p>\n
A very small bloc tried to defend or explain the comments. \u201cI mean, he\u2019s going to say what he\u2019s going to say,\u201d Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Wednesday evening, acknowledging he had not watched the comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows it\u2019s all about policy,\u201d Tuberville said, suggesting that it must have been a leading question that prompted the remarks. \u201cIt is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Republicans took the duck-and-dive approach, making a very brief critique of an obviously outlandish statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it was helpful,\u201d Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, swiftly jumping on an elevator to whisk him away from the Capitol press corps.<\/p>\n
Only a few Senate Republicans forcefully criticized Trump, along with the incendiary statements that have resurfaced from his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about it,\u201d Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters Wednesday. \u201cWhat have we been talking about all week long? Childless cat women, DEI candidates. Now, is she Black? Is she Indian?\u201d<\/p>\n
Murkowski is one of only four Senate Republicans to say publicly that they will not vote for Trump, so she has more political freedom to offer her unvarnished thoughts. She recalled how Trump had previously \u2014 falsely \u2014 questioned whether Barack Obama was a citizen. She questioned if his campaign is capable of carrying on in a normal fashion.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe they don\u2019t know how to handle the campaign. And so you default to issues that just should simply not be an issue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Most Senate Republicans jumped onto the same rhetorical life raft: Avoid addressing the actual Trump comments and instead wish for a return to the seemingly disciplined, policy-focused candidate of early summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say the policies are the key issues that we need to be talking about,\u201d Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told reporters Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Lankford\u2019s most recent policy foray would be a keen illustration of Trump\u2019s aversion to substance. Lankford spent months negotiating a border-immigration compromise with Senate Democrats, and just as it was coming together, Trump demanded Republicans torpedo the Lankford bill because he wanted to keep the issue alive to use against Democrats in the November election.<\/p>\n
Will Trump\u2019s rhetoric would hurt Republicans in November? \u201cI think we\u2019ll know more once the election happens,\u201d Lankford said.<\/p>\n
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has about as strong a relationship with Trump and his family as any GOP senator. He\u2019s worked closely with the ex-president in recruiting candidates and securing endorsements at the right time to get the best candidates through their primaries and into the general election for the Senate.<\/p>\n
He had not heard Trump\u2019s comments by Wednesday evening, when a pack of reporters trailed him, so he stopped and listened to a summary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s that difficult to litigate this race. This is the most liberal candidate for president that we\u2019ve had in our nation\u2019s history. I served with Kamala for four years,\u201d Daines responded.<\/p>\n
He blasted her \u201cSan Francisco politics and ideology\u201d and said Republicans should focus on contrasting \u201cthe two visions of where we\u2019d like to take this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a better strategy, and that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been talking about,\u201d Daines said.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not what Trump enjoys talking about. Republicans learned \u2014 relearned \u2014 this lesson again from the NABJ appearance.<\/p>\n
Trump likes to talk about the border crisis, but his solutions are the simplistic answers of finishing the wall or the impractical idea of creating mass deportation camps for millions of undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n
In selecting his running mate, Trump considered several Senate Republicans with real policy expertise in cutting taxes and national security. Some accomplished governors received interest.<\/p>\n
Then he settled on Vance, the least experienced GOP running mate since before World War II. Vance\u2019s biggest credential, his friends said, was his embrace of Trump\u2019s political persona.<\/p>\n
By Thursday morning, Murkowski had grown more furious.<\/p>\n
\u201cA campaign built on insults of an individual \u2014 we should be so far beyond that,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cIt should not be about which nasty name you can call somebody. It should be about the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For weeks, Senate Republicans delighted in the misery of their Democratic counterparts. The political story of the summer \u2014 whether President Biden would back down from his run at a second term \u2014 left GOP senators smiling and away from the media\u2019s glaring spotlight on their foibles. But the tables quickly turned. Their party\u2019s presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}