According to an article in Talking Points Memo, Republican Senator Roy Blunt will continue to endorse Donald Trump in spite of the recent brouhaha about what fellow Missouri Republican Ann Wagner terms Trump’s “predatory and reprehensible comments” about women. Blunt’s rationale is … Obama:

“I am glad to see that he understands more about the country now than he believes he did when this process started,” Blunt said, referring to a comment Trump made in his apology for the remarks. “I think if you want to solve the problems that have been created over the last eight years, you can’t have a third Obama administration. So he needs to be vigorous in explaining how he is a different man than that person, but how he hopes to lead the country and I think he may very well get that done.”

Problems that have been created over the last eight years? Like bringing a depression-bound economy back from the dead, pushing unemployment figures to less than 5%, and encouraging a steadily expanding economy? There’s lots more of that type of problem on the record and it was all accomplished despite record levels of GOP obstruction in which Roy Blunt was an enthusiastic participant. Close to 55% of Americans now approve of Obama’s performance in office. So, as far as a “third Obama administration” goes – preferably one without Roy Blunt in the Senate – why not?

But enough. We all know that the real reason for Blunt’s fealty to Trump lies in the fact that Missouri is one of those states where Trump is riding high and likely to continue to do so. The latest Emerson Poll has Trump up 13% in Missouri; Blunt hasn’t got any problem with those coattails and he’s gambling that a tape telling the red-meat eaters what we already knew about Trump won’t cut them off too short.

Ann Wagner, who has renounced Trump in the wake of the recent revelations must appeal to more moderate, suburban St. Louis voters who were already disturbed by Trump. Blunt, however, faced with a strong Democratic challenger in Jason Kander who, arguably, has some cross-over appeal to more moderate Republicans, can’t afford to dampen his support among the Trump-loving, out-state Republican base.

But, for the record, Blunt did say that Trump’s remarks “were disrespectful and inappropriate.” It’s called covering your backside.

Breaking news from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: country-club Republican, Ann Wagner (R-2) has had a change of heart and will no longer support Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The occasion for her newfound disdain was the exposure of Trump’s decade-old more explicitly sleazy than usual comments about women:

I have committed my short time in Congress to fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As a strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault, I must be true to those survivors and myself and condemn the predatory and reprehensible comments of Donald Trump, […]  I withdraw my endorsement and call for Governor Pence to take the lead so we can defeat Hillary Clinton.

Laudable, but, one can only ask, why now? Why didn’t the stream of bigotry, racism and misogyny that have emanated from Trump over the past few months lead Wagner to disavow him as the leader of her party long ago? This is a woman who, up to now has been willing to support a candidate endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan , giving him her vote with only a few, pro forma quivers of trepidation.

Do you think that maybe that the last sentence in the quote above might have something to do with Wagner’s sudden willingness to make a hard turn on a candidate whose essential unfitness for office has been obvious from day one?

The faint whiff of Republican defeat in November has now become an overwhelming stench and, like rats too timid to leap pell-mell from their sinking boat, many GOPers hope that Pence might just be just the life-preserver the party and their own, individual political fortunes need if they are to emerge unscathed from association with Trump. And this latest piece of Trumpian nastiness, along with Pence’s self-aggrandizing performance at last Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, offers just the opportunity they have needed.

Pence emerged as the hero of the Republican day when he coolly abandoned Trump during his debate with the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, last Tuesday. With almost breathtaking audacity, he substituted his own policy prescriptions for the incoherent ramblings of Donald Trump and earned widespread huzzahs for the cold-blooded smoothness with which he left his running mate twisting in the wind.

Many commentators have suggested that Pence did what he did in an effort to raise his profile for 2020. He was, in effect, preparing to make future lemonade out of an admittedly over-sized lemon. However, pols like Wagner want their lemonade right now and they think they can get away with flipping the ticket – even at this late date, an action that, as Akhil Reed Amar suggests in Vox, might be plausible if they act fast.

What this suggests to me is that now that the power struggles that animate the opportunistic GOP hacks have been bared for all to see it is, as they say, time to pass the popcorn.