Deep bench of GOP White House hopefuls undaunted by Trump — so far Posted by David Wallechinsky and Andrew Restuccia on July 29, 2016 at 12:36:35 PM EDT
With Trump having won the White House, the Senate and most governorships, there are more voices of opposition to him than is typically the case.
It does not seem that the party’s leaders are willing to compromise much. They seem to think that Trump is not only a great talent and business entrepreneur that will lead the United States to the pinnacle of U.S. power, but also a political genius.
There is a view that the “blue wave” that swept Obama to a second victory in the Democratic presidential primaries after two terms as president means that the GOP is in position to pick up seats in Congress in 2018 and maybe pick up governorships, too.
Even with Trump, the GOP leaders may have made a miscalculation: They were not successful in stopping a candidate who has the potential to get the country down the wrong path.
This is true of a number of Republicans running for president, like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is a libertarian and a tea party type, and Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who is an admirer of Trump, who has endorsed him, and who was endorsed by many other Republicans in the past two years.
And it is true of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the son of a pastor, who has made the most serious push for Trump, and who is also a religious conservative and who was endorsed by his religious conservative religious coalition, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and who has spoken out against Trump so far.
All of these Republicans may still be Republicans, but they are now, as the party’s leaders see it, on the wrong political path.
This is why I believe, based on what I have learned, that I am now going to go into this election with new optimism, not only because of what some of these potential voters in the Republican primaries told me, but because