This Senate Candidate’s Statement Took Guts

CHQ endorsed candidate for the open Senate seat in Florida, Congressman Ron DeSantis, yesterday issued a strong statement calling for Republican unity behind Donald Trump. DeSantis’ call for GOP unity behind Trump makes him the first major Republican political figure, aside from Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, to make a post-Indiana call for the party to unite behind Trump. 

DeSantis, was not part of the #NeverTrump movement, but he sponsored the House version of Senator Ted Cruz’s “Terrorist Refugee Infiltration Prevention Act” and also sponsored the House version of Senator Mike Lee’s bill to devolve much of the responsibility for higher education accreditation back to the states. The Higher Education Reform and Opportunity (HERO) Act was cosponsored in the Senate by Ted Cruz and DeSantis is generally acknowledged to be a conservative more in the mold of Lee and Cruz than a populist like Trump.

But DeSantis did not equivocate in why he issued such a quick call for a united Republican Party to back Donald Trump.

“Electing Hillary Clinton will continue America’s journey down the wrong track,” Rep. DeSantis said in a statement issued the morning after Trump’s victory in the Indiana Primary.

A Clinton win in November “will lead to more of the same: a stagnant economy held back by government bureaucracy, an exploding debt, crippling health insurance premium increases due to Obamacare, the steady advance of Islamic terrorists, the acquisition of a nuclear weapon by the militant regime in Iran, the appointment of left-wing judicial activists to the courts, rampant inside-the-Beltway cronyism, and the disgraceful treatment of our veterans by the VA,” continued DeSantis.

“In light of the exit from the race by Ted Cruz and John Kasich, it is now clear that Donald Trump will accumulate the delegates necessary to be nominated by the Republican Party.  If we want to defeat Hillary Clinton and have a chance to change the trajectory of our country, we need to unite behind the Republican ticket this November,” concluded Congressman DeSantis.

One of DeSantis’ earliest and most influential supporters, the Club for Growth, has been a central figure in the #NeverTrump movement. The Club, led by former Indiana Congressman David McIntosh, has run a series of hard-hitting ads against Trump and blistered him in countless statements and news releases.

There’s no doubt that in a state that fielded two competitors to Trump in the GOP primary—former Governor Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio—Ron DeSantis’ statement took some guts, since neither Rubio nor Bush has endorsed Trump or called for GOP unity behind the presumptive nominee.

Trump, for his part, not content to be gracious or even sensible in victory continues to make such unity difficult, but the fact that Rep. Ron DeSantis, a principled limited government constitutional conservative whom we admire and support has come around to back Donald Trump is evidence that such unity might be possible, if only because, as DeSantis implies, it represents the final hope of preserving some remnant of constitutional liberty after the November election. {eoa}

This article originally published at conservativehq.com.