http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/gop-stop-trump-breaks-222660 GOP’s Stop-Trump fever breaks
But a small core of Never-Trump operatives is still plotting a contested convention.
By Kyle Cheney and Ben Schreckinger
04/29/16 06:08 PM EDT
The Stop-Trump fever that gripped the Republican establishment for months has broken.
The walls are closing in around a shrinking band of hard-core opponents of the New York billionaire, who is tightening his grip on the Republican presidential nomination with big wins in state after state, congressional endorsements, and the acknowledgment from pillars of the GOP elite that Donald Trump will be the party’s standard-bearer.
There was grizzled RNC committeeman Ron Kaufman likening Trump to Reagan. There was Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s half-hearted endorsement of Ted Cruz. There was former House Speaker John Boehner’s confession that he and Trump are texting buddies and golfing partners. There’s the slew of endorsements (and a prediction by Trump campaign officials that another wave is coming after Indiana votes next week). It’s adding up to a slow but steady coalescing around the man once considered so vile to the GOP base that he’d rip the party to shreds.
“We've had enough intraparty fighting. Now's the time to stitch together a winning coalition,” said Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah. “And it's been clear almost from the beginning that Donald Trump has the ability to assemble a nontraditional bloc of supporters. … The ability to cut across traditional party boundaries — like '80, '92 and 2008 — will be key, and Trump is much better positioned to achieve that.”
Huntsman isn’t alone. He’s the latest in a long list of party stalwarts and defenders of the GOP establishment that have accepted Trump as the best remaining option in the field — and are encouraging Trump's opponents to wind down.
“Clearly, Trump has seized momentum in a huge way,” said Kaufman, a close ally of Mitt Romney who supported Jeb Bush’s candidacy this year. “As he goes through the process here in Indiana, it appears more and more likely that Trump will be able to have 1,237 [delegates] before we descend on Cleveland.” That’s enough to claim the nomination.
"There’s a chance here that in the end, our presumptive nominee will be known before the Democrats,” he continued. “Who would have thought that?"
Now, it looks like it’s the opposition — not Trump — who is dividing the GOP.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/gop-stop-trump-breaks-222660#ixzz47LXgFdB4Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
