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https://www.yahoo.com/news/talk-grows-replacing-trump-convention-000000790.html
Conservatives push for Trump replacement
A governor who has backed off supporting the presumptive GOP nominee could be courted for a Cleveland revolt.'We're going to get killed with this nominee' »
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is joined by
his daughter Ivanka as he speaks at Trump National Golf Club Westchester
on Tuesday. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
There is growing talk on the right of replacing
Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president,
and even chatter about a possible alternative. As
Trump has floundered over the past week after questioning a federal
judge’s impartiality because of his Mexican ancestry, Trump’s critics
within the GOP have stepped up their efforts to thwart him. Some anti-Trump
conservatives, who have tried for months to recruit an independent
candidate, have begun looking more closely at attempting to persuade
delegates at next month’s GOP convention to nominate someone other than
Trump.
“There is a rapidly moving train toward the
convention to try to obstruct it at the convention. Trump in the last 72
hours has given hope to people who think it’s now possible,” said Erick
Erickson, a conservative radio talk show host and one of Trump’s most
resolute critics.
“He’s starting to give everybody hope that he should
be stopped at the convention,” Erickson said, though he cautioned that
if Trump “cleans up his act then I think that hope will go away.”
One of the central players inside the
movement to recruit an independent conservative candidate also said
Monday that an anti-Trump group was “actively recruiting and setting a
convention strategy.”
And David French, a conservative writer who
considered running as an anti-Trump independent candidate, told Yahoo
News that Trump shouldn’t take his convention nomination for granted.
“If Trump continues to be cocky, saying, ‘I can do whatever I want and
do whatever I want because I own these people, there’s a limit to that,”
French said. “I’m sorry, but there is.”
Public calls for Republicans to replace Trump grew Wednesday.
“I want to support the nominee of the party,
but I think the party ought to change the nominee. Because we’re going
to get killed with this nominee,” Hugh Hewitt, a nationally syndicated
conservative radio talk show host, said.
“They ought to get together and let the convention decide. And if
Donald Trump pulls over a makeover in the next four to five weeks,
great, they can keep him.”
And the same day, Steve Deace, a conservative
activist and radio talk show host from Iowa, reviewed Trump’s most
recent missteps on his radio show and urged the 2,500 delegates to the Republican convention to “make this stop.”
“History is calling you to step up to the
plate. You have not a choice but an obligation. You must save the
country,” Deace said to the delegates.
A.J. Spiker, a former Iowa Republican Party chairman, tweeted
on Tuesday, “The Republican Party needs a patriot to step forward,
challenge Trump, work delegates and win the GOP nomination for president
in Cleveland.”
Prominent Republican politicians have also
started to distance themselves from Trump. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said
Tuesday he would not vote for Trump despite having pledged previously to
support the party’s nominee. And Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who also has
said he won’t support Trump, told an Arizona radio station that there
is “fear and loathing” of the party’s nominee.
“There’s not a lot of enthusiasm. There’s
some resignation and some mixture of fear and loathing to think about
what the next couple months will bring given the statements that he has
made,” Flake said.
Amid this agitation for a Trump alternative,
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s name has been increasingly mentioned as a
possible replacement. Walker was an early frontrunner in the GOP
primary, but he suspended his campaign last summer in the face of
sagging fundraising and poll numbers.
Walker previously said he would ultimately support the GOP nominee. But on Tuesday, Walker backed away from supporting Trump, pointedly saying, “He’s not yet the nominee.”
The conservative site RedState reported
Wednesday that there are “rumors” that Walker is “open” to such an
outcome. And one source who has been involved in the effort to recruit
an independent candidate said Walker has told those working to find an
alternative that he would be willing to serve as an alternative at the
convention if Trump continues to implode.
Rick Wilson, a Florida-based Republican
operative involved in the stop-Trump effort, said Walker’s potential
entry into the race was “speculative but widely discussed.”
For his part, Walker dismissed the
speculation in a statement to Yahoo News: “Let me be clear: I am focused
entirely on being governor. If there’s any campaign in the future, it’s
going to be running for reelection in 2018, which is a decision that
we’ll make in the months ahead following the next state budget.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks during the American Conservative
Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference in March. (Photo:
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Not every anti-Trump conservative thinks the
convention discussion is wise. “People have scenarios of the convention.
I think they are a waste of time,” said Michael P. Farris, president of
Patrick Henry College. “Not that I wouldn’t wish it. I wish it every
day.”
Nevertheless, many have argued
that the delegates to the convention are technically free to nominate
whomever they want, despite the impression that they are bound by the
results of the primary votes in each state. Every convention votes on
its own rules, so if this year’s GOP delegates wanted to unbind
themselves, the argument goes, nothing would stop them. Numerous
judicial rulings have found that even state laws, which purport to bind
approximately one-third of the delegates, cannot govern the internal
affairs of a national political party — such as how delegates vote at a
convention.
Deace wrote in a column on Saturday
that the convention rules allowing delegates to follow their
consciences “are in place to protect the system from just such a leader”
as Trump.
French pointed out that many of the delegates to the convention are “people who loathe [Trump], and that hasn’t changed.”
In the past few days, Trump found himself in a
new firestorm after he repeatedly brought up the Mexican heritage of
U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel in order to question the
judge’s impartiality in a case involving Trump University.
In February, Trump linked Curiel’s heritage
to the judge’s supposed hostility in his rulings so far in a lawsuit
brought by people who say they were defrauded by Trump University. But
the Manhattan developer began escalating that claim last week. Curiel
was born in Indiana and is an American citizen.
Trump argued that Curiel had a “conflict of
interest” because he is “of Mexican heritage.” Trump said that because
he wants to build a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, Curiel is
inherently predisposed to rule against him. As a result, Trump said
Curiel should recuse himself from the case involving Trump University, a
now-shuttered for-profit school focused on real estate training.
A wave of Republicans rebuked Trump’s
argument. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, an enthusiastic Trump
supporter, said Sunday that it “was one of the worst mistakes Trump has
made.” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who endorsed Trump just last
week, said Monday that Trump’s comments were “a textbook definition of a racist comment.”
Trump went into damage control mode Tuesday
afternoon and evening, issuing a long statement defending Trump
University and his complaints about Curiel. Trump further insisted he
would no longer talk about the case.
At an election night press conference
celebrating more primary wins, Trump implicitly acknowledged his recent
struggles by promising to do better.
“You’ve given me the honor to lead the
Republican Party to victory this fall,” Trump said, reading from a
teleprompter. “I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle
and I will never, ever let you down.”
Many believe Trump is incapable of showing more discipline.
“Every pivot of Trump’s is a 360,” Wilson said. “There’s no better version of Donald Trump. There’s no good Donald Trump.”
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