Newt Gingrich Scolds Anti-Trumpers: Any Serious Republican Will Get Behind the Nominee to Beat Hillary

HotAir.com:

Said this before, but given his role in the 1994 conservative revival in Congress, the eventual Gingrich endorsement of Trump will cause the right much, much more grief than tough-guy opportunist Chris Christie’s has.

He blamed Marco Rubio for some of that mudslinging, saying the Florida senator’s personal attacks on Trump after last Thursday’s debate may have backfired. “I suspect it hurt Rubio,” Gingrich says. “Rubio’s not an attack dog. Chris Christie’s an attack dog. Christie knows how to do that, Rubio doesn’t. And Rubio ends up, I think, looking silly.”

Gingrich also chided Republicans suggesting they won’t get behind Trump should he win the nomination. “I believe when you’re faced with a choice with Clinton corruption, appointing radical judges with a disastrous foreign policy, it’s very hard for any serious Republican to not support the Republican nominee,” he told reporters.

By “serious Republican” I assume he means “serious conservative,” in which case he’s quite wrong. It’s easy for a serious conservative to walk away from a party led by Trump. The problem for anti-Trumpers is that the last eight months, and especially the month of February, were an extended lesson in just how few serious conservatives the party really has. And if all Newt means here is that some of the people crying “Never Trump!” right now will eventually suck it up and vote for him over Hillary in November, well, that’s true. Whatever gaudy numbers the polls show at the moment about a huge minority of Republicans refusing to vote for Trump in the general election will gradually erode under establishment pressure. Most Republican congressmen will fall in line behind Trump, if only because their donors are twisting their arms to do so. (Will there be donors pushing back the other way? Hmmmm.) Attack ads will remind the right repeatedly, for months on end, just how contemptible the Clintons are. Respected party elders, starting with Newt Gingrich, will be enlisted to cajole conservatives to come home. With the exception of Glenn Beck and possibly Mark Levin, the stars of conservative talk radio will align behind the nominee too. That’s a lot of cumulative persuasion. Some group of NeverTrumpers will continue to hold out, led by people like Ben Sasse and (almost inevitably) Mike Lee, but I’d bet on election day the total number who stay home and/or split for a third party is in single digits. People are tribal creatures, and starting a new tribe in the middle of an election is a heavy lift.

Even so, this is bad timing for Newt. Conservatives are still coping with Trump’s impending nomination, a process that will go on for months. Telling them on Super Tuesday, when the votes haven’t even been counted yet, to start thinking about falling in line for him won’t be well received. The next stage of coping comes tonight, when Trump’s win will be spun as not quite as overwhelming as it might have been and therefore Rubio remains kinda sorta viable in Florida. The next stage will come after Florida, when the coping will involve a mix of (a) half-hearted “Rubio can still come back, sort of” spinning of the dour outcome with (b) a push to have Cruz and Rubio (and Kasich) hang around and go to the convention in hopes of denying Trump the nomination in Cleveland.

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