ON ROB PORTMAN’S website, trump is a verb, as in “With this president, politics trumps good policy”, but never a name. Of his party’s presidential nominee—with whom Mr Portman, a lean and businesslike first-term senator for Ohio and former trade envoy for President George Bush, will share the ballot on November 8th—there is no mention.
Like most Republican senators up for re-election in swing states, Mr Portman has endorsed Donald Trump, mainly because disowning him would have risked aggravating too many Trump voters. Mr Trump won 36% of the vote in Ohio’s Republican primary and his disgruntled supporters, congregated in Ohio’s south-eastern rustbelt, are not in a mood to forgive a snub. Yet in order not to offend the mainstream conservatives and swing voters who tend to matter more in Ohio, a rare authentically purple state, Mr Portman is keeping his party’s champion at arm’s length.
He declined to speak at the Republican convention in July, though it was held, partly at Mr Portman’s urging, in Cleveland, Ohio. He has not appeared with and, if he can help it, does not talk about Mr Trump. His campaign team, one of the richest and most...Continue reading
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