“A Trump supporter recently got in my face and threatened “bloodshed” at the national convention and said he would “meet me at the barricades” if Trump isn’t the nominee”, one party chair, who wished to remain anonymous, told Politico.
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Trump will bring new, anti-Washington voters to the polls, though not enough of them to offset the negatives, setting the table for what some Republican leaders fear will be a defeat of epic proportions. “I think we’re going to have a very strong case to make to the American people”, Mr. Priebus said.
Priebus instead wants the convention’s rules committee to take up any changes, in an apparent attempt to extinguish the talk about establishment Republicans trying to manipulate the system. Since many party leaders consider Trump and Cruz likely losers in November, many grassroots Republicans – as well as backers of Trump and Cruz – suspect that leaders hope to allow a “white knight” candidate to ride away with the nomination.
“What’s clear today is that we are headed to a contested convention”, Cruz told reporters in between private meetings with Republican National Committee members gathered at the Diplomat Resort & Spa for the first day of their three-day annual spring meeting.
Trump adviser Paul Manafort (left) says his candidate and RNC chairman Priebus are “communicating frequently” and communicating better these days.
South of the campaign trail, under the bright Florida sun, the Trump campaign scored a few of the type of behind-the-scenes victories that have largely alluded his run thus far. There is no new process.
Trump remains the favorite to win the GOP nomination, although his path to winning a majority of delegates through primary elections remains narrow.
While the official party platform doesn’t explicitly outline or endorse any abortion exceptions, GOP presidential candidates in the past have supported them, including Mitt Romney, John McCain and both Bush presidents. The veteran political operative, who previously worked for the RNC, is tasked with helping Trump play catch-up in the complicated state-by-state nomination process. On the ballot, voters can see if a delegate is committed to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. This year, they often feature gentle, though hardly subtle, persuasion by supporters of Sen. He and Trump each got 18 delegates in Louisiana, but one of the rules committee appointees is a Cruz delegate and the other is uncommitted.
Priebus said the Clinton Machine is on the warpath against Republicans because they’re desperate to hide all the flaws in her candidacy.
At the meeting Thursday, Manafort and Wiley showed data backing their claims in a PowerPoint presentation, but the narrow room was so packed with standing RNC members it was hard to see the screen, Kabel said.
“I think he’s just doing hardball business”.
“When he’s out on the stage, when he’s talking about the kinds of things he’s talking about on the stump, he’s projecting an image that’s for that goal”, said Mr Manafort at a private briefing in Florida.
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Despite getting shut out of the delegate race in New York, Cruz is aggressively courting delegates across the nation who could hold great sway at the convention. “In the supercharged political environment in which we find ourselves, this is not the time to be debating rules changes”, she said.
