Kirk is trying to walk a narrow path. He is distancing himself himself from Trump’s policies and rhetoric, but also has said he will back Trump if he was the nominee and suggested Trump could even help the Republican Party.
Asked in an interview with CNN last week if he’d support Trump for president, Kirk said: “Certainly, if he’s the nominee.” Given the opportunity to revise his comments after Trump’s win in Indiana, Kirk’s campaign declined.
Kirk said in that interview that even as he runs against many of Trump’s positions, specifically citing an “isolationist” foreign policy debuted last week, he is comfortable sharing a ticket with the mogul. He even said Trump might help the GOP brand down the line.
“Donald Trump is kind of a riverboat gamble,” Kirk said. “He won the Illinois primary, in this case we have seen the Republican vote up and the Democratic vote down, so it looks like it’s a net benefit.”
* Duckworth campaign response…
“Republican stalwarts Bruce Rauner and Paul Ryan — not exactly a pair of liberals — are refusing to support Donald Trump, while Mark Kirk has happily fallen into line. Kirk even suggested there’s a ’net benefit’ to having Trump on the ticket. Trump has shown himself to be dangerously unserious and unprepared for the office of the Presidency, but apparently the ‘R’ after his name is all Kirk needs to see. Kirk has shown bad judgment before, but his reflexive support for Trump may top it all.” — Matt McGrath, campaign spokesman
I talked with Illinois State Rep. Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove) Thursday, who supported Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Sandack said he’s not really sure he can come around to Trump.
He’s going to try, but it’s not a given. Trump is going to have to really change his tone - and some of his policies - to win Sandack over. When asked if the Illinois Republican Party could become more fractured this year, Sandack said that is a risk of Trump’s candidacy.
“I mean heck, to be completely blunt, the Republican Party in Illinois has barely been a blip on the radar,” he said. “We’ve had our own problems getting our message out, making ourselves far more attractive to taxpayers and constituents from a policy perspective.”
Sandack suggested the Illinois Republicans pick a small handful of core principles to unite the state party. And if Trump doesn’t come around to where he is and change his tone, then Sandack may end up focusing on his own re-election campaign this fall.
“I want to see some effective Republican policies displayed by our Republican candidate or I may just focus singularly on me and in my local race,” Sandack said.
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner won’t attend the Republican National Convention in July and won’t be endorsing Donald Trump, Rauner aides confirmed on Thursday, while not entirely disavowing the presumptive GOP nominee.
And it’s not yet clear whether Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger will make the trip to Cleveland, as she faces a challenge from Democrat Susana Mendoza this fall.
If she goes after Rauner ditched, she’s nuts. I highly doubt she’ll attend.
While Rauner has dubbed the presidential campaign’s rhetoric “appalling,” he has publicly stated — as the head of the state’s Republican Party — that he will support the nominee.
“I’ll do everything I can to work with that nominee,” Rauner said in March.
Rauner repeatedly had sought to stay out of the presidential race, though he did say that as leader of the GOP in Illinois, he would back the eventual nominee. But Rauner aides stressed there are various levels of “support,” and that the governor would not be giving Trump a formal endorsement.
Underscoring the politics behind Rauner’s move, the governor’s decision means he also will not accept the traditional role of heading up Illinois’ 69-member convention delegation and the high-profile media appearances that come with it. At the same time, Rauner avoids any potential appearance with Trump, which some advisers said privately would not be helpful to the governor back home.
“My feeling is we overestimate the impact of tactics and underestimate broad trends and demographics,” he said. “What Trump does or doesn’t do may have less impact than what Munger or Kirk does. Then there’s the broader context of the election and who votes and who doesn’t vote and what gets people to come out to vote.”
People pay infinitely more attention to presidential races than comptroller races, but that last sentence is most certainly valid. The headwinds ain’t gonna be kind.
His appeal among disaffected Republican primary voters is intensely visceral: He’d arrive in Washington a billionaire businessman in a hurry and get things done. After years of gridlock in Washington, who doesn’t find the idea of an outsider appealing? […]
Trump is an undisciplined political neophyte who loves the limelight and promises big changes, most of which appear either implausible or too vague to take seriously.
