If you want to understand the pain that Donald Trump's presidential candidacy is causing some Republicans downstream of him politically, you should have seen Nashville state Sen. Steve Dickerson's face hours before Sunday night's debate when a reporter asked him the inevitable question.
Will you vote for Donald Trump?
Dickerson, a Republican whose legislative record suggests a man who has little in common with Trump, faces a challenge for re-election to the Senate next month in the form of Democrat Erin Coleman. Like us all, he spent the last several days watching as the rats finally began fleeing the flaming Trump ship after Trump was seen in a video from 2005 bragging about being able to grope women at will because he was a star — a description of sexual assault. Ahead of Sunday night's debate, Gov. Bill Haslam announced that he would not support the GOP nominee, making him the only Tennessee official to do so.
Dickerson has not endorsed Trump to this point, rather he has only said that he would not vote for Hillary Clinton. In a Facebook post on Friday, after the Trump tape was exposed by The Washington Post, Dickerson called Trump's comments "unacceptable" and said the sentiment Trump had expressed was "wrong and disgusting."
On Sunday afternoon, asked if he would support Trump — who will almost certainly win Tennessee by a wide margin — he paused for a moment.
“At this juncture I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has yet to earn my support,” he said.
How could he earn it?
“At this point, I don’t know how,” Dickerson said.
Later, asked whether nothing that Trump has done, said or proposed up to this point had disqualified him from receiving Dickerson's vote, the senator paused again, formulating his response.
“I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton and at this point I do not see a path forward to vote for Donald Trump.”
