Pulling their fat out of the fire
by Tom Sullivan
At New Yorker, David Remnick ponders the unbearable rightness of Donald Trump:
This is not a Seth Rogen movie; this is as real as mud. Having all but swept the early Republican primaries and caucuses, Trump—who re-tweets conspiracy theories and invites the affections of white-supremacist groups, and has established himself as the adept inheritor of a long tradition of nativism, discrimination, and authoritarianism—is getting ever closer to becoming the nominee of what Republicans like to call “the party of Abraham Lincoln.” No American demagogue––not Huey Long, not Joseph McCarthy, not George Wallace––has ever achieved such proximity to national power.With opening day for major league baseball a month away, the Stop Trump effort is in full a-swing-and-a-miss mode, as the Republican National Committee fends off questions about a brokered convention:
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus highly doubts there will be a brokered convention in Cleveland this summer despite growing talk of one within his own party.Meanwhile, Republican donors are scrambling to pull their fat out of the Trumpster fire:
“I just don’t see that happening,” he said Sunday on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos." "It doesn't mean it's impossible -- it just means that you don't know what next week is going to bring, or the week after, or a month from now. “
As donors come to the realization that their non-Trump candidates have little chance of winning the nomination in the upcoming contests, chatter of a contested GOP convention has been dominating fundraising circles in recent days, and donors are beginning to re-evaluate how they can best spend their resources to increase the chances of a contested convention.Nancy Reagan (age 94) died over the weekend. At least she will not have to watch her party's self-immolation, says Larry King:
David Beightol, a former major Romney bundler and Bush backer, recently attended a briefing session Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign manager Terry Sullivan held in Washington, D.C. Although some donors were disappointed that Sullivan didn’t make the case for Rubio to actually win primaries in upcoming states, Beightol said he and other donors, who realize that a contested convention at this point is the only way to stop Trump, were won over.
“If there’s one thing glad about this,” he added. “She isn’t around to see the end of this political year. Because she was very upset by it.”
The GOP bacon's getting extra crispy about now. Trump is a burnin' thing.