To back Trump or to steer clear?

Republican politicians face a conundrum in Donald Trump’s indictment that reminds me of a scene from Pride and Prejudice. Confronted with the prospect of marrying the loathsome Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet’s father tells his daughter, “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Elizabeth’s choice is, of course, an easy one — and ultimately, she doesn’t make a stranger of either parent. The choice facing GOP contenders, however, isn’t so simple: should they risk alienating the 61 percent of likely Republican primary voters who voiced support for Trump as their 2024 candidate in a CBS News poll released Sunday by condemning his actions? Or should they stand by Trump and risk losing the votes of the many, all-crucial independents and moderates who view Trump’s indictment as “fair?”

Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy just jumped into the second camp with his signature aplomb, this morning sending a letter to his fellow 2024 contestants condemning the charges issued against Trump and urging them to join him in committing to pardoning Trump “promptly on January 20, 2025, for the federal charges.”

Nikki Haley, meanwhile, is hedging her bets on the “plurality of Americans [who] think that former president Donald Trump should have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to his handling of classified documents,” per a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. Politico reports that on Monday, “Haley called Donald Trump ‘reckless,’” and that “Tim Scott described the federal charges brought against [Trump] as ‘serious allegations.’”

Regardless of your opinion of Trump, “reckless” and “serious allegations” are certainly fair assessments of the situation and do not equate to a decided condemnation of Trump. Nonetheless, these words are a far cry from Vivek’s full-throated support of Trump. It is likely that Haley, Scott and other Republicans — “Mitch McConnell and his deputies are steering clear of defending former president Trump from felony charges brought by the Justice Department,” reports the Hill — are understandably worried about how the old guilty-by-association stigma will affect them and on-the-fence voters should Trump end up in prison.

Yet, as Forbes notes today, Trump has managed to draw a “slight polling boost” following his indictment — and, according to ABC, “a near equal number” of Americans who think Trump should have been indicted say the charges are politically motivated.

For 2024 presidential hopefuls, to support Trump or not is indeed an “unhappy alternative.” It’s fair to assume a prison sentence would diminish Trump’s standing as a presidential candidate, yet it would also have been fair to assume that simply an indictment would have done that, too. It did not. And if an indictment resulted in a “slight polling boost,” a prison sentence could result in a significant polling boost, in which case Vivek’s strategy might just prove to be a politically winning one.