Moving on, conservatives will drift toward the least of their worries.
“I think right now, we really have to somehow come together and support Donald Trump,” said Ted Cruz fan Kimberly Varga, “because I have such disdain for Hillary [Clinton] that that’s my only option right now.”
But conservative voters and candidates recognize that the brash New York businessman their party must now embrace — after months of trying to stop him — could be a blessing or a curse.
“He’s the only thing that can stand in our way of winning,” Varga said of retaking the White House while local and state candidates consider consequences of standing behind their divisive frontrunner.
About face
Pundits, pols and the writers who take their advice have been contorting for a week to make sense of what the name Trump would mean atop a presidential ballot, as opposed to a skyscraper. The possibility became all but certain when Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Cruz of Texas bowed out following defeat in Indiana.
To coalesce the party, Trump may have to walk back the insults he’s made against fellow Republicans, Muslims, blacks, Mexicans, women, immigrants, the disabled and POWs.
But his no-holds-barred approach in mocking his opponents’ character (think comments like “Little Marco” or “Dumb-as-a-Rock” Jeb Bush) may go over better against Hillary Clinton.
“I’m not offended personally to the point where I wouldn’t vote for him,” Varga said. “Ted Cruz was my guy. But I’m not going to dwell on the many stupid things that Trump may have said. I think the bigger picture is the Republicans winning the office.”
Becoming the big-tent candidate will require more than a change-of-heart endorsement from the national Republican Party, many of whose members — including the Bush family — stand by their disapproval of Trump. Conservative megadonors, writing off the presidential race, are writing checks for Senate and House races instead.
Voters are jumping off the Trump train, too. A Suffolk University poll released in late April found 19 percent of Republicans were willing to vote for Clinton instead.
“Unless Trump makes major changes in many of the positions that got him nominated [by a minority of Republicans and an even smaller minority of voters] there is no way I could vote for him,” said Hudson resident John MacWherter, a Kasich backer. “I’d either vote for Clinton or a third-party candidate.”
Trump’s disapproval rating, the highest among any presidential candidate in recorded history, is about a dozen percentage points ahead of Clinton, a fellow New Yorker with her own unfavorability issue.
Search for ‘Gipper’
And despite Trump’s stiff upper lip and commanding index finger, Trump looks less like Ronald Reagan to Kasich and Cruz fans interviewed by the Beacon Journal. Gallup polling finds that Reagan, another Washington outsider, captivated the American public while Trump turns many of them off.
Still, Trump’s most cost-effective asset — free media attention, which the New York Times valued at $1.9 billion through February — may offset the meager $1 billion he told NBC Nightly News he plans to raise.
“I’m not even sure that’s necessary, because I have a big voice,” Trump said. “I go on shows like yours, I explain the truth. And people seem to go along with it.”
Republicans who have rejected Trump, at least until he finds a way to unite the party, include every presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan and every House Speaker since Newt Gingrich, who has criticized current Speaker Paul Ryan for not getting behind the presumptive nominee.
Most vice presidential candidates — including Ryan — also reject Trump, for now. The exception is Sarah Palin, who ran on the 2008 Republican ticket with Sen. John McCain, a war hero ridiculed by Trump for getting captured by the North Vietnamese.
Look out below
Presidential election years bring higher turnout, a phenomenon that tends to favor Democratic candidates.
“I hate to say it but there’s [also] a portion of them that are low-information voters,” Sen. Frank LaRose said, a Copley Township Republican.
Adding to that unpredictability is the unknown political behavior of voters who, though in their 50s or 60s, say they’ll be going to the polls for the first time in their lives. This includes thousands of Trump and Bernie Sanders fans energized by disdain for free trade deals and the two major political parties.
Even with their minds made up on who to pick for president or U.S. Senate, certainty fades as these voters get further from the top of the ticket.
“They either leave the ballot blank or they go eenie-meenie-miney-mo or they vote the party line,” said LaRose.
Sensing the adverse impact of a Trump candidacy, Republicans must prepare for a “wave year,” like the last two general elections, which ebbed for liberals, or the mid-term elections, which flowed for conservatives.
LaRose believes Sen. Rob Portman, whose grassroots campaign has pounded miles of pavements and made thousands of phone calls, is the type of candidate to “transcend those wave years.”
LaRose said even “Democratic friends” have said Kasich, whom he campaigned for, ran a respectable campaign that stuck to issues that bring America together instead of dividing it. Now, the state party and LaRose will get behind Portman as Democrats sense his vulnerability in a volatile election cycle.
Tight races
Of particular interest are competitive districts, like that of Anthony Devitis, a representative in the Ohio House.
“My district is what they call an upside-down district,” Devitis said. “I’m a Republican and there are more Democrats registered than Republicans.”
Sensing the uncertainty ahead, the politician from Green began knocking on doors months ahead of schedule to take control of the political landscape before it becomes too tainted by the national race.
“We were unsure of the outcome and so we thought we would be proactive,” Devitis said. “Door knocking, that’s the best way to make sure people don’t forget about me.”
“It’s good for them; it’s good for me,” Devitis said of presidential politics encouraging him to spend more time talking to constituents.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug.