Politics –
GOP Convention:
The ‘Nuclear Button’ Plan
The Republican Party is so fearful of handing Donald Trump the presidential nomination and therefore the keys to the party, that they’ve launched an all out “scorched earth” effort to stop him before this summer’s GOP convention. Is it too little, too late?
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If you ask most establishment Republicans, no, it is not too late. At this point, stopping Trump is vital to their very survival. They’d rather push the nuclear button and burn the whole GOP convention down, rather than see Trump drive the ship.
Deepening anxiety among Republicans climaxed last Thursday during a meeting in Washington of prominent conservative leaders, who are dedicated to finding a way to prevent Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates needed for the nomination. Led by activist Erick Erickson, prominent conservatives created a 100-day plan which calls for a unity ticket and a convention fight to stop the Republican front-runner. It’s a sign of the growing desperation within the party establishment to find an alternative to the billionaire businessman.
“If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots,” Erickson wrote in a statement following the secret meeting.
Step 1 of the plan is this: If it becomes necessary to reject Trump in Cleveland, Republicans will convince both delegates and the public that it was not the party’s obligation to hand him a nomination he did not secure on his own.
“The burden is on Trump, not the party, if he fails to clinch the nomination,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who advises the House leadership. If Trump can’t collect the necessary delegates to win the nomination outright, Republicans will be protected by the rules of the convention to select whomever they want as the nominee. They are not bound to choose the candidate who comes the closest.
However, if Trump does reach the required amount of delegates to secure the nomination, establishment Republicans have surmised that such an event would be the demise of the party. That is when they would enact Step 2: The Nuclear Plan.
“We intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump,” the statement said. “Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life, and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties.”
HUH???
Yes, you read correctly. Establishment Republicans are putting policy above party. In fact, they have their finger on the nuclear button and are prepared to secede from the party, saying if “the GOP ceases to be a party for traditional conservatives, we must go elsewhere.”
WOW!!!
The thought process at the meeting was to work with “an existing third-party instead of trying for ballot access.” Such a move would probably see the old guard moving to the already established Libertarian or Constitution party. Still, the message here was clear: STOP TRUMP AT THE GOP CONVENTION, OR LEAVE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!
A contentious point among much of the party faithful is that Republicans waited much too late to take Trump seriously and do something to stop him, out of fear of “insulting” him. Much of the credit goes to Trump, who used his New York hutzpah and reality TV show persona to intimidate Republicans into not daring to cross him. By threatening to run as an Independent, Trump silenced all critics and ran the gambit, picking off challengers one by one until he was too far ahead to beat.
Now, Trump is revving up his bully persona again, by using petty threats again against the GOP to force them into handing him the nomination. “The Donald” has threatened that riots and all bad things will ensue should he not be coronated the nominee at the GOP convention.
“I think we’ll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn’t and if we’re 20 votes short or if we’re 100 short and we’re at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we’re way ahead of everybody, I don’t think you can say that we don’t get it automatically,” Trump said. “I think it would be — I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have riots. I’m representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.”
He added: “If you disenfranchise those people and you say, well I’m sorry but you’re 100 votes short, even though the next one is 500 votes short, I think you would have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I believe that. I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen.”
Can you imagine if Barack Obama had made such a warning in 2008, promising that if he didn’t get the nomination: “I think you’d have riots,” then adding “I wouldn’t lead it but I think bad things would happen”??
Already, Trump has pressed his minions into action.
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On Friday, Sam Clovis, a national co-chair for Trump’s campaign, threatened to give up his credentials as a convention delegate and leave the Republican Party as a threat to the GOP about the “consequences” they will see if Trump is blocked from the nomination.
“I will tell you this, if the Republican Party comes into that convention and jimmies with the rules and takes away the will of the people, the will of the Republicans and the Democrats and Independents who voted for Mr. Trump, I will take off my credentials, I will leave the floor of that convention, and I will leave the Republican Party forever,” Clovis said.
For establishment Republicans who see this as a critical life or death situation, they were not deterred by the stark warnings.
“We believe that the issue of Donald Trump is greater than an issue of party,” Erikson said. “It is an issue of morals and character that all Americans, not just those of us in the conservative movement, must confront.”
Deborah DeMoss Fonseca, a former aide to late Sen. Jesse Helms who was in attendance at the meeting, said that there was “definitely a consensus of not wanting Donald Trump.”
“I think there’s still several scenarios that could play out. And I think this particular group will look for whatever it is that’s going to do it,” she said.
“I have doubts about Mr. Trump,” Sen. Lindsay Graham added. “I don’t think he’s a Republican, I don’t think he’s a conservative, I think his campaign’s built on xenophobia, race-baiting and religious bigotry. I think he’d be a disaster for our party and as Senator Cruz would not be my first choice, I think he is a Republican conservative who I could support.”
According to the online betting site PredictIt, the probability of a brokered convention is at 43% as of last week, which is up from 35% on Super Tuesday. However, Ladbrokes PLC, another online betting site, listed the odds of a brokered convention at 56% probability, which is up from 50%.
No matter what party stalwarts do, the Republican Party as we’ve known it is effectively dead. What we’re witnessing now is the corpse of the old GOP being propped up in a “Weekend At Bernie’s” sort of way. The party will bury itself this summer at the GOP convention, when Donald Trump either wins the nomination outright and establishment members bolt to start their own party, or when members successfully block Trump from securing the nomination, prompting him and his followers to unleash holy hell on the GOP.
Stay tuned…we’re in for a bumpy ride.
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My buddy at work was telling me about this earlier. Supposedly a lot of the top Repub donors have been donating money to launch a all out attack on Trump. They have tv and news ads planned and all that. They don't care nothing about his threats of riots or whatever. All they care about is saving the Repub party. I have never seen anything like this before but it sounds like it is about to get real ugly.