The schism between leaders in the Republican Party is highlighted in “Romney loyalists’ divisions over Trump spill out into open at Utah conference “ article in The Washington Post. Below are excerpts and my comments.
PARK CITY, Utah — Mitt Romney warned that a Donald Trump presidency could normalize racism, misogyny and bigotry in the national conscience. Businesswoman Meg Whitman compared the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Adolf Hitler. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was asked, uncomfortably, how he could explain his endorsement of Trump to a young child…..
This comparison for Hitler by a Republican isn’t even an example of Godwin’s Law (that any long message board thread on politics eventually ends with a reference to Hitler).
Then came Trump’s boosters, awkwardly imploring about 300 business executives and GOP establishment donors and strategists gathered here for Romney’s annual ideas festival to unite for the fall campaign. In a stroke of defiance, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared that Trump and the GOP would win in November “with or without you,” according to attendees.
When I see the reasonable and forthright former RNC chair Michael Steele on MSNBC, where he appears almost every night on one or another of their talk shows I think of the contrast between him and Reince Priebus. I wonder whether Steele feels any sympathy for him, considering Priebus could always keep his dignity, quit, and start working on a book. Then when the dust of the election settles no doubt he’d land a gig on one of the cable TV shows.
“I love what this country is built upon, and its values — and seeing this is breaking my heart,” Romney told summit attendees, according to the Associated Press.
When’s the last time a politician talked about having his heart broken by another candidate in the same party?
Trump punched back at Romney at his Saturday rally in Tampa, calling him “poor, sad, Mitt Romney” and a “stone-cold loser.”
Trump’s insult is actually true in every respect: compared to Trump he may be poor (although with cash on hand if Maverick’s owner and bona fide billionaire Mark Cuban is to be believed Romney has more than Trump), Romney admits to being sad, and whatever stone-cold means, he did loose the election.
Here’s a great comparison — pro-Trump forces are compared to Stalin, ant-Trump to FDR, and Hillary to Hitler!
Scaramucci (a New York financier who was one of Romney’s top funders in 2012)
and other Romney associates supportive of Trump, including Ron Kaufman, a longtime RNC member from Massachusetts, have pleaded with Romney to tone down his opposition in the interest of party unity…...
“If Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt could get together to defeat Adolf Hitler, we can end the schism in our party,” Scaramucci said. “We’ve got to change the rhetoric and the nonsense that’s going on in the party right now. We have to unify this party.”
What do you mean “we” Scaramucci? He wants to believe that Trump himself can change his rhetoric, and then that people will believe that the tiger has changed its spots.
“They would like to see a unified party, but if I hear anything consistently, it’s country before party,” said Spencer Zwick, a Romney confidant and his former national finance chairman, who helps run the E2 summit.
If they believe it’s country before party, this means that Republicans should say this means voting for Hillary.
“He couldn’t have done a worse job in his first month” since securing enough delegates to claim the nomination, Simmons (former fund-raiser for and friend of Trump) said of Trump. “I think he missed a golden opportunity to pivot. There’s a lot of people who really want it to work, but they’re not going to say, ‘Trump at any cost.’ ”
All of my Democratic friends and I are hoping Trump can’t resist going off teleprompter script and create, for the gullible, the illusion that he’s really pivoted. I’m a member of the “let Trump be Trump” school. I think Hillary and her surrogates, and eventually her VP selection, should keep “encouraging” Trump to go Tweet-crazy and make unhinged insults at his rallies. They need to maintain some dignity and obviously not get into the gutter with him, but when you have both Hillary and Elizabeth Tweeting to Trump “delete this account” you know they have already recognized that this is a new era where good manner in political persuasion has been redefined.
As Trump digs himself deeper and deeper into the volatile lunatic hole, it will make it more and more difficult for Republicans who care about the ultimate survival of the party to continue to support him.
