For the GOP, a Pickle of a Platform

"To me, tone matters," Barrasso said. "I'm from Wyoming. We tend to be respectful, positive, inclusive, and that's what I would like to see in the platform."

Yes, but. When speaking with Republican politicians and elected officials, it is always, yes, but. They talk tone and respect, yet they have to deal with the reality of a nominee of unparalleled vulgarity and offensiveness.

"I have concerns with a number of things our nominee has said," Barrasso allowed. "It's not the way I would say them." On one level, this is an infuriatingly mild rebuke to Trump's provocations.

On another, I confess some sympathy for Barrasso et al. It's easy for folks like me to demand that they renounce Trump. It's much harder when you've got an election coming -- not just for president -- and a party to hold together.

And so, the platform, an exercise that features quadrennial hurdles. On the Republican side, these include language on abortion and gay rights, the latter particularly interesting because this will be the first platform written since the Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage.

But the Trump phenomenon heightens the challenge for the 112 delegates chosen to assemble the document.

First, whether and how to incorporate -- respectfully, no less -- Trump's trademark positions. Will the platform mention the wall? Call for mass deportations? Envision an immigration ban, however temporary?

Second, even assuming those issues can be elided through artful drafting, how to reconcile Trumpian stances -- against free trade, against entitlement reform -- with long-standing, and conflicting, GOP doctrine?

The 2012 platform lauded free trade agreements for having "facilitated the creation of nearly 10 million jobs" and lamented the Obama administration's "deplorable ... slowness" in completing pacts -- including the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump now denounces. It emphasized the need to "restructure" entitlements, including raising the Medicare eligibility age. Trump has vowed to "save Social Security and Medicare without cuts."

How to harmonize these positions? The platform, Barrasso said, quoting his Wyoming colleague, Sen. Mike Enzi, an accountant, should be seen as "a sales brochure, not an audit." Even without having to meet generally accepted accounting principles, that is one hard job in this year of Trump.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.