Washington: Mike Pence came to Capitol Hill Tuesday on a mission to promote Republican unity, attacking Hillary Clinton for describing many supporters of the GOP ticket as bigoted “deplorables” and urging Republicans to rally behind their nominee, Donald Trump.
But Pence struggled to press the attack: In separate news conferences, House and Senate Republican leaders declined to join Pence, the Indiana governor and vice-presidential nominee, in rebuking Clinton over her remark.
Pence wound up raising the subject only when pressed by a reporter — and then gave a halting answer in which he would not call David Duke, a white supremacist and one-time Ku Klux Klan leader, “deplorable”. He insisted instead that Clinton did not have “that bad man” in mind when she assailed Trump’s supporters.
It was a noticeable break in stride for the Trump campaign, which had zeroed in on Clinton’s remark at a Manhattan fund-raiser Friday night — one for which she expressed regret the next day — running a new commercial and dispatching surrogates to attack her for what Trump has termed a “slander” of his “wonderful, amazing” followers.
Congressional Republicans were even blunter in private.
An otherwise friendly morning meeting with House Republicans turned awkward when Pence was pressed by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska about Trump’s difficulties with women, said two House Republicans who relayed the conversation. Fortenberry told Pence that his young daughter had come to him and said, “Daddy, Donald Trump hates women,” according to one of the lawmakers, who both insisted on anonymity to recount a private conversation.
“It’s just not true,” Pence shot back, arguing that Trump was improving with women, the two House Republicans said.
Pence faced resistance again when he met privately with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, neither of whom has endorsed Trump. Lee pressed the governor on his reluctance to denounce Duke and the so-called alt-right movement more explicitly, stressing “that Republicans must identify David Duke’s racism as deplorable,” according to Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Lee.
Pence was greeted warmly by Senate Republicans when he joined them for a lunch of Chick-fil-A sandwiches, but received a firm rebuke from Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Calling Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “a thug and a butcher”, McCain said Trump’s embrace of the autocratic ruler was unacceptable, according to a Republican official present who also insisted on anonymity.
Pence insisted that he and Trump were trying to belittle President Barack Obama rather than to laud Putin.
The very nature of Pence’s visit to Capitol Hill offered some insights as to why Trump, who had his own testy visit with Senate Republicans here in July, is still confronting difficulties with his party. Playing the part of troubleshooting diplomat as much as running mate, he spent much of the day behind closed doors reassuring his former colleagues, with whom he retains close ties, that they could trust Trump. Pence said that Trump behaved differently in private, and even had a spiritual side.
Congressional Republicans said they were pleased that the presidential race was tightening and that Trump appeared more viable, partly because their own prospects depend on his being competitive enough that Republicans still bother to vote.
With his modest uptick in the polls, Trump may have forestalled an outright break with Republicans in Congress. As recently as a few weeks ago, party leaders and strategists in Washington were preparing to take emergency measures, having their candidates disavow Trump and present themselves to voters as a counterweight to a President Clinton.
Republicans may still activate those plans if Trump stumbles badly against Clinton in the final stretch of the race. But for now, the party has adopted a middle-ground approach, with most Republicans in Washington nominally supporting Trump while advancing campaign messages that differ widely from his in almost every respect.
That distance was on display when congressional Republicans refrained from echoing Trump’s indictment of Clinton over her saying that half his supporters were bigots, sexists and homophobes.
Few Republicans want to confront thorny follow-up questions about Trump’s supporters, and fewer still want to make matters of race, gender and sexual orientation central to their campaigns. The silence about what has for the last three days been at the core of Trump’s campaign also underscored a more fundamental gap: Republicans on Capitol Hill have their own agenda and intend to run their campaigns apart from Trump — not as a unified ticket.
