Yesterday we marveled at Donald Trump’s unhinged response to Sen. Lindsey Graham. A gracious man trying to unite his party would’ve taken Graham’s reticence to extend an olive branch, vow to earn his support, and assuage party elders and donors that Trump could indeed pivot to general election footing. Instead, he didn’t just burn the bridge, he dropped a nuclear bomb on it, then took a piss on the rubble. And all along, the party elders stared aghast.
On Friday, Mr. Bush’s disavowal of Mr. Trump landed as a bitter blow. The former Florida governor is revered among party veterans and has one of the most powerful fund-raising networks in Republican politics. In a statement, Mr. Bush said his former opponent lacked the “temperament or strength of character” to serve as president [...]
He reacted with fury to another statement of rejection, from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Mr. Graham, a longtime Trump critic who briefly ran for president last year, said Friday that Mr. Trump was unfit to be commander in chief.
Here’s the problem for Trump—he doesn’t want to spend hundreds of millions of his own dollars for the general, so he needs to party donor base to pony up. Some, like the Rickets family and Sheldon Adelson have already signed up, but the bulk of the party’s fundraising apparatus answers to the Bush family, and all of them are livid at how Trump treated Jeb. They’ve flipped Trump the bird, and Trump is incapable of the ass-kissing required to repair the damage. People kiss his ass, not the other way around.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign is trolling.
Hillary Clinton’s supporters in recent days have been making a furious round of calls to top Bush family donors to try to convince them that she represents their values better than Donald Trump, multiple sources in both parties told POLITICO.
The moves come as Clinton and the Democratic Party try to take advantage of deep unease among establishment Republicans on Wall Street and elsewhere with Trump’s emergence as the presumptive Republican nominee.
So the critics will likely scream, “SEE? Clinton is a Republican!” In reality, Clinton doesn’t need this money. She’ll have all she needs from traditional donors and small dollar supporters (she’s ramped that up, not to Bernie levels, but respectable nonetheless).
Rather, money that goes to her is money that won’t go to Trump, and there’s huge value in denying him (and the RNC) funding. Think about all of Trump’s liabilities, now add being broke to his litany of woes. And this is one time that he can’t declare bankruptcy to save himself.
“When you think about it there is no downside to making these calls, including for Hillary herself to make then,” this person said. “They may say no but they will talk to her for half an hour about their view of the world and probably say nice things when asked about her publicly. And they might stay away from Trump.”
That last sentence being the key, of course. Now why do these idiots go tell Politico their dastardly plan? Just shut the fuck up and do it behind the scenes! Bragging about it undermines the strategy. That aside, it’s smart strategy, a great way to troll the GOP’s nominee. And he plays into it every time he escalates his intra party war. And there’s apparently no one to tell him, dude, the primary is over, you might want to stop attacking your own party and begin focusing on Clinton.
Trump will need money. Raising money requires ass-kissing. He can’t kiss ass. He can’t even keep bridges intact. This’ll be fun.