The developing feeling among House Republicans? Donald Trump is preferable to Ted Cruz. “If you look at Trump’s actual policies, they’re pretty thin. There’s not a lot of meat there,” says one Republican member in Ryan’s inner circle, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the two front-runners as leadership has carefully avoided doing all week.
If Trump were to get the nomination, he would “be looking to answer the question: ‘Where’s the beef?’ And we will have that for him,” says the member.
The member says he believes that, when it comes down to it, “almost all of the candidates would subscribe to” the conservative agenda he and the rest of leadership are hoping to advance.Elder statesman Bob Dole came out early with his view that Trump was preferable because nobody could stand Ted Cruz and Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”
The act of doing so reassured conservatives. Some conservatives actually decided it was safe to head toward Trump, even though Cruz was still in the race. They did so largely because Trump appeared to be taking policy seriously and was hiring conservatives.Well, that hasn't worked out so well. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the policy shop is pretty well defunct:
Since April, advisers never named in campaign press releases have been working in an Alexandria-based office, writing policy memos, organizing briefings, managing surrogates and placing op-eds. They put in long hours before and during the Republican National Convention to help the campaign look like a professional operation. But in August, shortly after the convention, most of the policy shop’s most active staffers quit. Although they signed non-disclosure agreements, several of them told me on background that the Trump policy effort has been a mess from start to finish.According to the article, people have been working feverishly to put together a serious policy agenda and gather various advisers on specific topics. They announced national security and economic advisory teams to great fanfare in the press but the people on them have barely had any contact with the campaign and Trump is certainly not listening to them, if he even knows who they are. Everything comes out of Trump Tower.