begin quote from:
Trump Seeks Unity but Finds Rejection
Donald J. Trump may find it difficult to raise
funds after being shunned by respected party figures, including Mitt
Romney, Paul D. Ryan and President George W. Bush and Mr. Bush’s father.
More in Politics
Donald J. Trump’s
moment of triumph this week quickly gave way to a trying and even
humiliating test of his standing as a Republican leader, as a phalanx of
the party’s most respected figures shunned the man anointed as their
presumptive presidential nominee.
Hoping
for a moment of party unity, Mr. Trump had scarcely declared victory in
Indiana when the cascade of rejection began, starting with the
announcement by George Bush and his son George W. Bush, the only former
Republican presidents still living, that they would not back his
candidacy. And on Thursday night, Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee,
said he intended to hold to his earlier pledge not to vote for Mr.
Trump, according to an audio recording of his remarks. Mr. Romney said
at a private speech in Washington that he was “dismayed” by the state of
the campaign. “I wish we had better choices,” Mr. Romney said. “I keep
hoping that things will somehow get better.”
Mr.
Romney’s remarks came just hours after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the
nation’s highest-ranking Republican elected official, delivered an
embarrassing blow to Mr. Trump, declaring that he had not yet proven
himself worthy of an endorsement.
In Washington, the announcement was seen as giving members of Congress a
free hand to deal with Mr. Trump, without pressure from the speaker to
rally around him.
Mr.
Ryan’s office announced Friday afternoon that it had issued an
invitation to Mr. Trump to meet next Thursday in Washington with House
Republican leaders “to begin a discussion about the kind of Republican
principles and ideas that can win the support of the American people
this November.”
In a Fox News interview Friday morning, Mr. Trump said he had been unsettled by Mr. Ryan’s rebuke.
“I
was really surprised,” Mr. Trump said. “By the way, many other people
were surprised by it, and some were really surprised by it, and not
happy about it.”
In
a separate interview, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson,
said on CNN that Mr. Ryan should not remain as speaker unless he
supported Mr. Trump.
The
eruption of hostilities comes at a perilous moment for Mr. Trump, as he
seeks to turn toward the general election and woo a larger audience of
voters, while taking control of the Republican Party’s political apparatus and fund-raising machinery.
Continue reading the main story
Mr.
Trump, who won the nomination largely on a message of immigration
restriction and cracking down on foreign trade, enters the race against
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, as a
deeply unpopular figure, distrusted especially by women and college
graduates, and Hispanic and black voters.
Still,
he has collected important endorsements across the Republican ranks,
including one from the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, of
Kentucky, and from Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman who hastened on Tuesday evening to declare Mr. Trump the party’s presumptive nominee.
But
many of the leaders now turning their back on him are among those most
trusted by Republican donors, as well as by right-of-center voters most
at risk of bolting the party in the fall campaign.
The
lurch away from Mr. Trump exposed unsightly divisions in the highest
levels of the party: A spokesman for the Republican National Committee
acknowledged on CNN on Thursday that Mr. Priebus, who has been
advocating strenuously for party unity, had not been aware of Mr. Ryan’s
plans to announce he was withholding his endorsement.
Mary
Matalin, a veteran strategist for Republican presidential campaigns,
said it was simply too soon to call for the party to fall in line.
Such
a demand, she said in an email, would be “ridiculously premature, given
the discontent among party regulars and conservatives in particular.”
Ms. Matalin, who said in a television interview on Thursday that she was changing her voter registration to the Libertarian Party, wrote in an email that it was because of her concern about Republicans’ abandoning small-government “liberty principles.”
Republicans
say that party officials, including Mr. Ryan, may come around to Mr.
Trump as the campaign proceeds. Mr. Trump’s unexpectedly swift success
in the primaries startled Republicans who expected the race to drag on
for at least another month, and perhaps until the July nominating
convention in Cleveland.
Mr.
Trump now faces abrupt and extraordinary pressure to adapt his
political message for a wider electorate, and to begin assembling the
political infrastructure required for a general election.
Having
financed his primary campaign in part out of his personal fortune, Mr.
Trump said this week that he would rely on conventional political donors
for the general election. On Thursday, Mr. Trump named a finance
chairman, Steven Mnuchin, to head up his campaign’s fund-raising, and a
few of the most prolific donors on the right have seemed to warm to him.
Sheldon
G. Adelson, the billionaire casino owner who is a major benefactor of
the party, said at an event in Manhattan on Thursday that he would support Mr. Trump.
Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, whose family financed millions of
dollars’ worth of ads attacking Mr. Trump in the primaries, has
committed to aiding his campaign.
But
division reigned across most of the Republican ranks, as Mr. Trump
failed to secure uniform backing from the party’s leaders in government.
Two senators, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, have
pointedly declined to endorse him in the general election, and Mr. Sasse
has called for a third-party campaign against Mr. Trump.
Several
Republican governors have indicated that they will not endorse Mr.
Trump, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and, an aide confirmed,
Bruce Rauner of Illinois. Mr. Rauner’s decision not to back Mr. Trump
was first reported by The Chicago Tribune.
And
Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, chairwoman of the Republican
Governors Association, issued a noncommittal statement on Mr. Trump,
saying that she would not vote for Hillary Clinton but that she needed
to hear more specifics from Mr. Trump on policy.
A
longer list of Washington lawmakers, including Senators Richard M. Burr
of North Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, have committed to
support Mr. Trump, often tersely confirming in emailed quotations that
they intend to back the party’s chosen nominee. Many members of the
House of Representatives have done the same.
Some have declined to mention Mr. Trump by name.
Most
Republican campaign contributors face less immediate pressure to count
themselves as with or against Mr. Trump, but strategists expect Mr.
Trump to face considerable skepticism with donors, whom he castigated as
influence-buying plutocrats during the Republican primary campaign.
John
McKager Stipanovich, a longtime Florida lobbyist and fund-raiser close
to former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, said Mr. Trump would face stiff
resistance among the people the party has typically relied for financial
support.
Mr.
Stipanovich predicted that the stances taken by Mr. Ryan and the Bush
family would hurt Mr. Trump with traditional party donors.
“Obviously,
Trump has spent an awful lot of time in the last year disparaging
people like that,” said Mr. Stipanovich, who has vowed to oppose Mr.
Trump. “It will be some indication of how craven they are to see how
quickly they crawl to him on their knees, or to the party to help him. I
don’t know that they will do that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment