January 11, 2018 10:47 AM UTC

Coffman on Campaigning With Trump: Maybe In Six Months!

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• by: Colorado Pols

A story from Buzzfeed News late yesterday is raising eyebrows in Colorado after some fascinating quotes from Rep. Mike Coffman on the matter of campaigning with President Donald Trump this year–would it help Coffman? Would it hurt him?

“Each district is different, and probably in mine it probably wouldn’t be helpful,” Colorado Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, who represents a swing district that is a perennial Democratic target, told BuzzFeed News.

That position, though, is rarely said openly, with some Republicans careful to avoid publicly belittling a president who closely tracks slights. Coffman, just moments after making those comments, flagged BuzzFeed News down again to clarify. “Right now I don’t think it would be helpful. I don’t know what the future’s gonna be, I mean, who knows what it’s gonna be, six months from now whether it would be helpful or not,” [Pols emphasis] he said. “Certainly today it would not be. I mean, right now it would not be helpful.”

Given that Mike Coffman ran in 2016 arguably the most anti-Trump Republican campaign of anyone who wasn’t running against Trump, it’s quite a shock to see him equivocate about whether Trump would be a help on the campaign trail–enough that he left the door open to doing so if Trump’s political fortunes were to improve. In a district that Hillary Clinton carried by nine points in 2016, Coffman’s waffling on this essential question doesn’t help him politically at all.

In fact, Coffman’s need to “flag down” this reporter to clarify that he might be okay with campaigning with Trump “six months from now” invites the charge that his values shift with the prevailing winds.

Which, our readers know, his critics on both sides have said since 2011.