“I am prepared to lose fair and square, as I am sure is Donald”, Carson said, the news outlet reported. Carson on Friday floated the idea that he might leave the Republican Party should elites “subvert the will of the voters” and select an establishment candidate over voters’ preferences.
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Carson said that if the reports about the meeting were correct, “every voter who is standing for change must know they are being betrayed”.
But near the end, McConnell and Priebus acknowledged to the group that a deadlocked convention is something the party should prepare for, both institutionally within the RNC and politically at all levels in the coming months.
“I signed a pledge, but the pledge was a double deal – they were supposed to be honorable”, Trump told Tapper. “I won’t stand for it”.
Sean Spicer, Republican National Committee spokesman, said Carson should be concerned.
A so-called “brokered convention”, in which no single candidate has a sufficient number of nominating delegates to become the presidential nominee in the November election, used to be a common feature of American politics.
But he added: “I will not sit by and watch a theft”. Still, among that comparatively small slice of likely Republican primary voters, Trump’s support grows, even as national polls among all voters reveal he’s not close to being a victor.
The Republican party will assign 2,472 delegates through a state-by-state series of caucuses and primaries between February and June.
Trump’s rise to the top of the 14-candidate field has confounded establishment Republicans who have been waiting in vain for the NY billionaire’s insurgent campaign to collapse.
Upon leaving the Monday dinner, several attendees said they would share memos about delegate allocation in each state as well as research about the 1976 convention, the last time the GOP gathered without a clear nominee. In Ribble’s words, it appeals “to the worst parts of who we are as people” – our fears, racism, and other negative things.
But there’s also the possibility that no candidate will win a majority of the available delegates before the convention, which would create a political reporter’s dream: a contested convention where anything can happen.
One official at the dinner meeting said the discussion of a brokered convention only came up briefly and that it was not about Trump. They’re going to have problems, but I hope it’s not going to be that way.
“But if it is [happening], I’d certainly go all the way”, Trump said, to the Washington Post.
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“I’ll be disadvantaged”, he continued. That’s a big disadvantage….
