If Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week over the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments, it's not only going to be momentous for him, it's also going to be a "come to Jesus" moment for his entire party, a Bloomberg columnist warned Sunday.
It's one thing for many Republicans to secretly oppose Trump while still skating along with him at this point — but it will be another situation entirely if the former president is hit with criminal charges. Republicans will finally be forced to take a stand, wrote Jonathan Bernstein.
"Up to this point, keeping quiet was a viable strategy," Bernstein noted, adding: "Not a very brave one!" Taking on Trump would have "risked alienating voters and party elites who remain steadfast supporters," wrote Bernstein.
"But once there is an indictment, staying neutral is no longer a smart option," he pointed out. "The problem will no longer solve itself."
Whatever Trump’s "countless previous transgressions, a criminal charge is a watershed moment that will be exponentially more difficult for the GOP to dismiss. It also makes more real the possibility of additional indictments on matters more consequential than the potential violation of campaign-finance law likely at issue in the Stormy Daniels case," Bernstein wrote.
"Devout Trump voters will remain in the former president’s corner no matter what," he noted. "But there is a significant segment of the Republican electorate — perhaps up to two-thirds of the total — who seem open to other Republican contenders" — and they'll be looking to their timid leaders for direction, he added.
Even if just a plurality of prominent Republicans "decide to make a public break with Trump, it will still reverberate strongly through the party," wrote Bernstein. Those leaders just have to find the nerve.
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