1 June 2016
Why Marco Rubio, et al, are kissing Trump’s rump
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Republicans, former rivals like Marco Rubio, are rallying to his banner with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some of this brown nosing amounts to a reflexive loyalty to party, but a lot of it results from a cold-blooded calculation that stiffarming the winner of the nomination would outrage the party’s base and queer one’s chances of winning nomination in 2020 if Trump goes down in flames in November.
As Michael Cohen observes in American Maelstrom: The 1968 Election and the Politics of Division, there’s a precedent dating from 1964:
Still, Nixon understood that someone would need to truly bring the conservative and liberal wings of the party back together again. And who better to perform such a task than the man who had stood by his party’s nominee even as others abandoned him? That fall, Nixon crisscrossed the country, stumping for Goldwater: thirty-three days, thirty-six states, 150 stops, hundreds of thousands of miles traveled. Conservatives may not have fully trusted Nixon, but they now knew they could rely on him to show them the respect they craved.
Even if Trump wins the election, he could be a one term president. At 70, he would be the oldest person ever to take the presidential oath of office for the first time. He might decide not to seek a second term.
Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, et al, are thinking like Richard Nixon. That’s a morally craven approach to their duties as citizens, but politically, it’s not a bad strategy.