Al Drago/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
An earlier version of this article appeared at The Huffington Post.
You might think Donald Trump's campaign would be imploding about now.
His attack on Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding in the lawsuit against Trump University was a trifecta. It combined a disparagement of the judge's ethnic heritage with an assault on the independent judiciary and a clear warning that Trump would use the presidency to settle personal business scores.
A number of Republicans felt compelled to distance themselves from his remarks. New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, in a tough re-election campaign, told The Washington Post, "His comments are offensive and wrong and he should retract them."
And therefore … ? She's still endorsing him.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who only recently decided to support Trump, objected to the comment, but he continues to back Trump for president.
Indeed, none of these tame critics declared that he was no longer worthy of their support. And you have to wonder what it will take for Trump to produce open revolt in Republican ranks.
You can count the prominent Republicans who have declined to endorse Trump on the fingers of one hand (and still have the middle finger left over for other uses in the campaign.)
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is one. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker is a second. And the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, a third. All have spoken out against Trump. Rick Synder, the Republican Governor of Michigan who is in big trouble at home, declined to make an endorsement, but otherwise doesn't comment.
Jeb Bush has said will not vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton, but has not spoken forcefully against him. Karl Rove, who once called Trump "a complete idiot," says he is undecided. Likewise John Kasich and Ted Cruz.
But the vast majority of the Republican elite are still standing by their man.
New Mexico Governor Susan Martinez, chair of the Republican Governors' Association and the rare high-ranking Latina in Republican politics, has traded gibes with Trump. But lately, she and Trump have been trying to make nice.
Other Republican elected leaders are showing their quiet displeasure only by staying away from the convention. That includes several GOP incumbent senators in tight races-all of whom have nonetheless endorsed Trump and will vote for him. Susan Collins of Maine, the last Republican moderate in the Senate, supports him.
Remarkably, even Republicans who were savaged, slandered, and humiliated by Trump have lined up to endorse him. That group includes House Speaker Paul Ryan, his wetness Little Marco Rubio, and John ("I like people who were not captured") McCain.
More remarkable still are people like Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. After Trump's attack on Judge Curiel and threats to use the presidency to go after him, McConnell helpfully explained that a President Trump would be constrained by the advice of a White House Counsel-as if Trump's inner staff would be anything but ultra-loyal.
McConnell later sought to distance himself from Trump's comments on Curiel, but did not come close to withdrawing his endorsement.
These Republican leaders are the same people who rail at Barack Obama's supposed abuses of executive power-for benign and carefully wrought orders like giving more workers overtime pay protection or staying the deportation of exemplary immigrants brought here as young children. What sort of executive do they think Donald Trump might be?
Why don't more Republicans who are appalled at both the substance of what Trump says and at what it will mean for the November election break with him? One reason is that they don't want to face the wrath of pro-Trump voters, or in Paul Ryan's case, the rank and file in the House.
Second, they are worried that intensifying the split in the Republican Party will only lead to a bigger November victory for Democrats. And third, some of them think, opportunistically, that a President Trump might be used to further Republican goals, even though he has displayed nothing but contempt for core Republican principles.
The trouble with these calculations is that the split is already there.
A figure like John McCain, in a close Arizona re-election battle, is already in trouble with the GOP Tea Party base. Endorsing Trump, after having been savaged by Trump, just makes McCain look like a sad old man.
Profiles in courage are exceedingly rare in politics. Recent ones include acting Attorney General James Comey's refusal in 2004 to sign off on a key aspect of the Bush administration's illegal domestic spying program; the 1996 resignation in protest by three top Clinton officials (Peter Edelman, Mary Jo Bane, and Wendell Primus) when Clinton decided to sign a Republican bill destroying the federal guarantee of aid for the needy; and the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre" resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, when Richard Nixon ordered them to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. It fell to Nixon loyalist Robert Bork, then solicitor general, to do the deed.
One also recalls the gradual defection of leading Democrats from Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam War escalation, beginning with prominent senators like J. William Fulbright, until he was finally deserted by his own secretary of defense, Robert McNamara.
There are few if any Republicans today with the stature and dignity of Elliot Richardson. A decision by major Republican leaders to break with Trump would put country above party. We haven't seen that in a very long time.
