"The entire rest of the party’s top echelon of elected policymakers has decided ... to sit this one out." Can't say I blame them.

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COMMENTS: 
*  Maybe the party decided on "none of the above"? I know if I was a Republican, that's who I'd pick. Guess Clinton wins by default.
*  funny, very funny. would any of us if we were in office go against the wishes of the koch boys. think about that for a second. here are two people who are going to give our party 1 billion dollars by the time they are done. do we make them angry and perhaps get primaried. there are only a few brave people in the republican party, the rest are sitting back and waiting for the choices of the masters of the party to become evident. and i am not talking about the VOTERS!!!!
*  ...  it would be no more than poetic justice if the party dies. They attacked government itself and deliberately damaged the economy, hoping that the victims would reward them.
*  It's called self-preservation.  Particularly in the House but also for GOP Governors and however many Republican Senators are up for reelection this year.  I doubt there will be many endorsements until after the convention, and maybe not even then if either Trump or Cruz emerge with the nomination.
*  Tom Nichols, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, sees Trump as an existential threat for the Republican party. Although he (Nichols) is a staunch conservative and no fan of Hillary, he argues that a Clinton victory over Trump would be better for his party:  Better to lose to a true enemy whose policies you can fight and repudiate, rather than to a false friend whose schemes will drag you down with him.  ...after four years of thrashing around in the Oval Office like the ignorant boor he is, voters will no longer be able distinguish between the words "Trump," "Republican," "conservative," and "buffoon."  I think that he's right about this, though there are a lot of things in his essay that I disagree with. How many others share his view? http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump/
*   "...after four years of thrashing around in the Oval Office…"  Stop to consider that..there's every likelihood Trump wouldn't last four years… or possibly even two..as president. It is a real job after all, with real work involved… something Trump has never ha to suffer. When he realizes it not what he thought it was, (Like being king.. don't laugh, there are many articles about his early life where his parents installed in him that impression). His mindset is not one where day-to-day workloads are looked forward to. He won't last four years.  Which means the most important thing in this election for Republicans is going to be whoever the Vice-Presidential candidate is.
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The party still hasn’t gotten around to deciding
By Steve Benen, April 13, 2016

It’s been five weeks since Marco Rubio suffered a humiliated defeat in his own home state, forcing his exit from the Republican president race, and creating the three-candidate contest that we see today. His exit, however, hasn’t had quite the impact it was expected to.

The Florida senator easily had the most Republican endorsements of anyone in the party’s 2016 field. If “the party decides,” the party decided … on Rubio. His failure, however, meant the GOP establishment’s backing could shift to a new favorite. Who would be the beneficiary?

As it turns out, the answer, by and large, is no one. In the five weeks since Rubio quit, Ted Cruz has picked up support from three governors, two senators, and seven U.S. House members, which isn’t bad, but which is hardly a tidal wave of new backers (and some of these new “supporters” have grudgingly gone with Cruz via process of elimination). Over the same period, Donald Trump has received endorsements from one governor and three House reps, while John Kasich has added one Senate backer and one House backer.

And that’s it. The entire rest of the party’s top echelon of elected policymakers has decided – even now, in mid-April – to sit this one out. There are 53 Senate Republicans other than the one in the race, and as of this morning, 48 of them haven’t announced their support for any of their party’s presidential hopefuls. There are 30 Republican governors other than the one in the race, and 20 of them are still on the sidelines.

Even in the far-right U.S. House, where there are a whopping 246 Republicans, only 49 of them – roughly one in five – have thrown their support behind one of the GOP candidates. The other 80% of the House Republican conference is sitting on its hands.

There really is no modern precedent for this. In the modern era, the race for the GOP nomination is usually nearing its end by now, and the party’s leading elected officials have always extended their support to someone by this point.

But not this year. For all the chatter about the Republican apoplexy surrounding Trump, most of the party establishment still hates Cruz, and doesn’t see the point of supporting Kasich, so party officials have chosen to remain spectators in their own party’s presidential nominating contest. Some won’t even bother going to the convention.

When we talk about 2016 being different, we’re referring to all sorts of oddities, and this is certainly one of them.
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