WA-03: The Trump dilemma for local Republicans meets its biggest test in Southwest Washington
In normal times, which this definitely is not, a member of Congress saying she was going to vote for the presidential candidate from her own party would be no big deal.
But when Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Southwest Washington answered firmly “I am” to a newspaper’s question of “are you going to vote for Trump this year?” it was as if one of the final patches in a national crazy quilt was being laid into place.
Herrera Beutler became among the last of the anti-Trump GOP holdouts in the nation to fall in line. There are now no incumbent Republican U.S. House members who say they won’t vote for the president, and only a handful of U.S. senators, such as Utah’s Mitt Romney, who have been willing to go on record saying they just can’t do it.
Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party is pretty much complete. Political scientists may well look back on this era and wonder: How did it happen? And why did the party of conservatives so willingly go along?
But back to the present: For Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, coming around on Trump has touched off a unique sort of political storm. She is being pilloried now in ads for flipping to back the candidate who actually won her Vancouver-based district by a solid 7.4 percentage points, 49.9% to 42.5%, in 2016.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-trump-dilemma-for-local-republicans-meets-its-biggest-test-in-southwest-washington/
