Sometimes politics trumps doing right thing

You know what would have been cool? If Gov. Brian Sandoval, U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki had just said no.

As in, "No, Mitt Romney, we won't join you at the Trump International and stand beside Donald Trump to help you raise money."

They could have said it nicely, telling Romney that, as fellow Republicans, they support him. That they'll vote for him. And that they would go to literally any other place in Las Vegas.

But not that building, not with that man.

Trump, as many know, is the highest profile purveyor of the idea that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and is thus ineligible to hold the presidency. He repeated that assertion to the Review-Journal's Laura Myers prior to the Trump fundraiser Tuesday.

"A lot of people agree with me on this issue," Trump told Myers. "I don't know if they like me, but they agree with what I say, whether it's about Obama's birth certificate, or whether it's China ripping us off, or whether its OPEC ripping us off."

No one expects miracles in politics. It would be far too much to expect Sandoval to point out that the place of Obama's birth is a fact, not an "issue" upon which one can have an opinion.

It's unreasonable to think Heller would have said, "Mr. Trump, you can acknowledge that Obama was born in Hawaii, or you can be wrong. But those are your only two choices."

And it's beyond expectations for Krolicki, a longtime Romney supporter, to have abandoned his candidate because of Trump's trafficking in lies.

But it would have been a nice alternative to all three men standing on stage with Trump and Romney, no doubt praying the whole time that the birther issue didn't come up.

Romney would surely have attended anyway: He explained before his Las Vegas visit the reason why: "I need to get to 50.1 percent or more. And I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people."

And Trump. He's probably also appreciative of having the support of Trump, manifestly not a good person.

On the birther nonsense, Romney tries to be agile: "I don't agree with all the people who support me. And my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in."

Again, governor, this is not a matter of belief, it's a matter of fact. You can believe anything you want, but if it's contrary to reality, it simply makes you wrong, and more than a bit pathetic.

But pathetic is not a word one would usually apply to Sandoval or Krolicki. Both are serious people, people who don't dabble in ugly political lies. Yet there they were, lending by their very presence credibility to a man who deserves none, watching as their choice for president held his tongue in order to fill his campaign chest.

"If Mitt Romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like Donald Trump because he's so concerned about lining his campaign's pockets, what does that say about the kind of president he would be?" asked Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager.

Well, it says he'd be like a lot of politicians, who even in an age of loosened campaign restrictions and risibly "non-coordinated" super-PAC spending still must say things they don't believe - or hold their tongues about things they do - in order to raise as much money as possible. Nothing particularly new there, although it's hardly a profile in courage.

That's why it would have been cool for our state's leading Republican elected officials to have just said no.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.