Madison Brief:

A strange thing happened to the Republican establishment this week; they were Trumpted (or, TrumpTed): a phenomenon whereby the fear of a Trump Republican presidential nomination is so intense that rational mainstream Republican leaders abandon their core beliefs and choose to coalesce around a candidate they disdain, Senator Ted Cruz.

Mitt Romney was downright schizophrenic when he told voters in Ohio to vote for John Kasich, then pivoted to send robo calls to voters in Utah telling them to vote for Ted Cruz.

Then came Senator Lindsay Graham whose five stages of grief were on full display in an evolutionary montage on Morning Joe.  In an interview on the Daily Show, Graham admitted about Cruz, “He was my 15th choice. What can I say….my party is just really screwed up.”

Finally, Jeb Bush, who chose to give his support to Ted Cruz in a written statement, tepidly weighed in by saying that the “U.S. senator from Texas represents the party’s best chance of winning the White House.” Perhaps Jeb is just trying to soften the sentiments that he shares with his big brother George W. who said in October, “I just don’t like the guy.”

In a nutshell, they believe that Cruz is only interested in the betterment of Cruz, not the party, nor the country. They point to when Cruz spearheaded the 2013 shutdown of the government, insisting that if Congress defunded Obamacare, the President might go along. Even his staff admitted that he knew it wouldn’t work, but for Cruz, it guaranteed him national exposure while engendering the hardcore support of his conservative base. But it also led to a national default, terrifying the business community, and saddling the GOP with the lowest approval ratings in decades.

Is he a principled leader or an obstructionist? Gritting their teeth, the establishment is willing to cast their lot with Cruz because they are fearful of the ascendency of Trump and losing their currently held majority’s in both the House and the Senate.  They also fear the destruction of the Republican Party.  Better to stand with the enemy you know, than the enemy you don’t know.

In an open convention, however, all bets are off.  It is worth noting that even Abraham Lincoln went into the 1860 Republican Convention as the least favored candidate and won the nomination after three rounds of voting against Seward, Chase and Bates — each who had alienated factions of the Republican base.

Politics certainly makes for strange bedfellows.