Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who has never been a fan of Donald Trump, said he wouldn’t cast a vote for the Republican front-runner even if he wins the GOP nomination.
“I’m absolutely not going to vote for Donald Trump, even if he’s the Republican nominee,” Erickson told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files” podcast from CNN and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
“I’m not going to vote for the liberal who likes Planned Parenthood and universal health care, and I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton either, but there will be someone whom I will vote for.”
The conservative pundit, who writes for The Resurgent website, said he expects the GOP race to take shape after Super Tuesday, with either of Trump’s top rivals Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio forced to drop out.
“One of them is going to have to go,” he said.
“I do think that you’re going to see conservatives try to push Cruz out if he doesn’t do well in Texas,” he noted. “Even if he wins, but it’s close, I think they’ll probably start rallying around Rubio.”
“If Ted Cruz can’t win Texas, then he does need to get out of the race. But a lot of the conventional wisdom that he needs to get out, I think, isn’t premised in fact. I mean, he’s doing better than Rubio in Florida right now. He’s doing better even than Trump in California in the Republican primary right now.”
“I don’t know that there is an impetus for them to get out. At this point it’s become ego. I mean, they’ve gotten along in the Senate for a very long time and I think right now they and their staffs hate each other, so there’s no incentive for either to get out when they think that the other should get out, which is essentially handing the race to Trump.”
But there’s something even more important going on in Washington, according to Erickson, who said he believes a bigger problem for Republicans would be caving to Democrats’ demands to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before the end of President Barack Obama’s second term.
“If Republicans cave, I mean, this would be more the end of the Republican Party than Donald Trump,” Erickson said.
“Because going back to Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the Supreme Court has been the issue of the Republican Party. It comes up in every presidential campaign, every Congressional campaign, every even numbered year. If the Republicans were then to say this year – after years of saying, ‘The Supreme Court hangs in the balance, you must vote Republican’ – ‘Hey, we’re going to go through with this,’ it would be game over.”
To hear the whole interview with Erickson, which also touched on his upbringing abroad and much more, click on http://podcast.cnn.com. To get “The Axe Files” podcast every week, subscribe at http://itunes.com/theaxefiles.