McConnell claims GOP lawmakers will sacrificeWhite House, drop Trump ‘like a hot rock’ if he’s nominee
Republican
voters need only look to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to
understand that GOP lawmakers will willingly sacrifice the White House in
order to save their own hides.
As the
Republican Party begins to accept the very real possibility that front-runner
Donald Trump will be their presidential nominee, McConnell “laid out a
plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump explicitly in a general
election,” The New York Times reported.
According
to The Times, resistance to Trump “runs deep,” and a “desperate”
behind-the-scenes “mission to save the party” from the real estate tycoon
stalled out. As a result, “two campaigns have drafted plans to overtake Mr.
Trump in a brokered convention.”
The
newspaper said the effort to “unite warring candidates behind one failed
spectacularly.”
An
overture from Senator Marco Rubio to Mr. Christie angered and insulted the
governor. An unsubtle appeal from Mitt Romney to John Kasich, about the party’s
need to consolidate behind one rival to Mr. Trump, fell on deaf ears.
If Trump
is the nominee, McConnell allegedly has told Senate colleagues, “We’ll
drop him like a hot rock.”
And he
may treat Trump’s loss in the general as a given, allowing senators to distance
themselves from the candidate and run negative ads against him.
While still hopeful that
Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the
prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm
them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to
create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr.
McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given
and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a
President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.
All of
which suggests that when it comes to political theater, the best is yet to come
in the 2016 election. At the very least, it’s going to be an interesting.
