I couldn't agree more; however, Trump meet with Prieibus long ago ... he was bought.
Shame on RNC chair Reince Priebus if Trump is the nominee Reince Priebus, the Republican convention in Cleveland this week could mark the beginning of his end as head of the Republican National Committee. That is no small thing, given that the completion of his current term would make him the longest-serving head of the RNC. It is an RNC whose budget, staff, operations and local and national outreach he has bolstered. He is also — conservatives need to know — a genuine conservative not afraid to defend everything from “protecting the life of the unborn” to the “two-parent family,” as he vowed when I heard him here in Cleveland this past week.
Priebus was strikingly religious in his rhetoric — unusually so, I was told by one fellow observer, a veteran reporter from a leading evangelical publication. The RNC head earnestly quoted the Old Testament and New Testament, from Isaiah to Paul. They were clearly the words of not just the good and decent man we’ve watched preside over the party of Lincoln and Reagan, but someone enduring a painful struggle, someone who — to borrow from a favorite Lincoln quotation of Reagan — seems driven to his knees by the overwhelming conviction that he has nowhere else to go. Perhaps that’s because Priebus is surely carrying the cross right now in his job unlike ever before, as he tries to hold fast to what is good and abhor what is evil (Romans 12:9)...
The cross that Reince Priebus carries is the impending nomination of Donald Trump as leader of his party in an election that Senator Ben Sasse, R-Neb. (A, 94%)—in a masterstroke of inspired brilliance—flawlessly analogized to an infernal garbage heap, i.e., a “dumpster fire.” It is a cross whose forgiveness Donald Trump feels that he personally need not seek. (“Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness,” asked Trump, “if I am not making mistakes?”)
Countless Republicans who force themselves to pull the lever for Donald Trump will at best hold their nose and at worst violate their conscience. Priebus, however, must do far more. As RNC head, he must agonizingly rally Republicans nationwide around a presumptive nominee that he knows is not only repulsive but probably not even a Republican. Priebus must endure the wholly ignoble and wholly unholy task of trying to persuade Republicans to vote for a man wholly unfit for office in order to deny the evil that is Hillary Clinton. It is a hellacious situation....
...And thus, if the GOP leaves Cleveland with Trump the nominee, and he proceeds to get crushed in November against an otherwise easy foe for Republicans, and hands the nation and culture and the future of religious liberty to Hillary Clinton, then Reince Priebus cannot escape a fair degree of blame. If that happens, then make no mistake about it: Priebus will resign come November 9, 2016, the morning after the nightmarish presidential election and detonation of the Republican Party whose implosion he presided over.
In Cleveland, Priebus is gaveling together the most divided Republican Party in anyone’s memory, thanks to the inherently divisive figure of Donald Trump, who now pleads for unity after a yearlong scorched-earth campaign of eviscerating the character (and sometimes even the wives) of every Republican who committed the unforgivable sin of not telling him that he is wonderful. This is a deeply embedded psychological-emotional flaw that Donald Trump revealed yet again recently in another “unity” meeting that included Republicans who dared not gush at his magnificence, and who Trump thus reflexively viewed with bitter contempt. If you are a Republican in the way of this new “Republican” then you are a loser, a cheater, a choker or some other level of subhuman. And if you come to Cleveland without prostrating yourself before Donald Trump, then you are a “terrible” person...
...The Republican Party is not now, never has been, and never should be held captive to the whims of a faction, no more than the United States of America should be...
...Representatives have an electoral and moral responsibility to halt the madness of what James Madison called “factions,” which is what Donald Trump represents—the collective madness of a faction of voters in the Republican Primary that prevailed only because the desperate urge to stop Hillary Clinton had produced 17 candidates licking their chops and dividing the three-quarters of non-Trump votes. That division ultimately redounded to Trump’s benefit....
The Republican Party is not now, never has been, and never should be held captive to the whims of a faction, no more than the United States of America should be....
...Donald Trump now claims that the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, plus “liar” George W. Bush, surrender monkey John McCain, R-Ariz (F, 34%), and “loser” and “choker” Mitt Romney is all his to remake in his own image, whatever it may be at the moment. It his Republican Party, he and his partisans are claiming in Cleveland...
...Unless, that is, Republicans in Cleveland this week save their party. And that duty falls to the only real leader of the Republicans, Reince Priebus. Whether he likes it or not, and regardless of whether the current disaster has anything to do with him, there is no one else to assume that role. This is his moment....
Reince Priebus needs to have full command of all polling data — of those Republicans who beat Hillary Clinton (some of them easily) and those who (really, only one) lose to her. He and his staff need to have this information available to everyone — to every delegate in that building.
Reince Priebus needs to have a plan in place for a replacement to Trump if his nomination is not rubber-stamped on the first ballot.
They need to know the odds.
They especially need to know the odds because there is a huge number of delegates who do not like the presumptive nominee this year and prefer someone else. I know it. I saw it. The party hasn’t seen anything like this since the 1976 convention with the Reagan revolt against the incumbent, President Gerald Ford. In Cleveland last week, the vast majority of conservatives that I spoke with do not like Donald Trump. They would jump at the first viable alternative. If they give the nod to Trump, it will only be because they have no other choice.
Hence, Reince Priebus needs to have a plan in place for a replacement to Trump if his nomination is not rubber-stamped on the first ballot. Priebus must make sure that, at the very least, the GOP does not find itself in the same position where it was mired for months: unable to unite around a single non-Trump candidate. If Trump again prevails because of the lack of Republicans’ ability to coalesce around a clear alternative, whether a Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%), Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (C, 77%), or the maddening John Kasich, or whoever, Priebus must be blamed as head of the party.
It is up to Reince Priebus to ensure that Armageddon does not prevail in Cleveland. How so? The details are not mine to figure out. That’s his job.
This will be painful to Priebus, a nice guy not given to combat. Hostility, confrontation, acrimony are The Donald’s forte, his preferred arena, and no one does it better. No one slings it better. Trump loves to look people in the eye and tell them they are stinking losers. Priebus isn’t that cruel.
The task also will be hard for Priebus because Trumpists are image-bearers of their faithful leader. They have assumed his persona. When they don’t get their way, they threaten and harass with behavior we have never seen in the Republican Party. One of them, Carl Paladino, is no less than New York co-chair to Donald Trump’s campaign. Trump-like, he just fired off a nasty email to a delegate committing the heinous sin of not boarding the Trump Train, instructing her that she should be “hung for treason” for her opposition to the dear leader....
...This is the kind of coercion we expect not in the Republican Party but in the Russia of Vladimir Putin — an authoritarian that Donald Trump has openly admired.
Of course, such bullying by Trumpists has been going on for months. Some of it has been downright thuggery — strong-arm tactics that have been frequently reported. I’ve learned things in private, some not as thuggish as Paladino’s statement, but nonetheless intended to smoke out the non-loyalists...
...
Another example: One young conservative, a rising star in the party, and a minority, was lobbied by Trumpists to speak at the convention, presumably to add some “color” to a campaign that is the death-knell to longtime GOP attempts to attract Latinos and blacks. The problem: this rising star had been hoping for a Cruz or Rubio nomination in 2016 — or, of course, anyone but Trump.
This person was willing to speak, but apparently must not have been willing to endorse Trump.
The person is not on the speaking list. You kiss the ring of The Donald, or you get lost, you loser.
This week in Cleveland is Reince Priebus’ big moment...
...But unfortunately, Reince Priebus has no other choice, especially if he cares about keeping a job in which he’s truly trying to do what is good, because there’s no way that Republicans in this Year of Lord 2016 ought to awaken to a Hillary Clinton presidential victory the morning of November 9. It utterly should not happen. It is unthinkable that the head of the RNC could still stay on board after presiding over such a historically gigantic blow-up of his party, one that should have never happened.
If the Trump Train derails Priebus’ party, then Priebus, as the GOP’s conductor, must share some responsibility for the carnage.
This week in Cleveland is Reince Priebus’ big moment. He can go down in history for political greatness or political infamy. The choice is his.
- See more at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/07/shame-on-rnc-chair-reince-priebus-if-trump-is-the-nominee#sthash.rd1ZLaQQ.dpuf
