GOPs macked: Trump at odds with own party
WASHINGTON: As businessman Donald Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican party nomination for the White House, efforts have intensified to stop, block and deny him.
All of it originates in his own party, from leaders, groups and activists who fear his candidacy could destroy the party, and cost it the White House and Congress.
They have called for Trump’s rivals to drop out in favour of any one of them who can stop him, run negative ads against him and unleashed surrogate attack dogs on TV and social media.
Nothing seems to have worked though. Trump won seven of the 11 Super Tuesday races, taking up his tally to 10 nominating contest wins so far.
He tried to reach out to his detractors on Tuesday by calling himself a “unifier” — incredulous as it may sound, he conceded — who was just waiting to “get all of this finished”.
But the party leadership remained unconvinced, largely.
Mitt Romney, who ran for the White House in 2012 and is now a Republican party wiseman, turned up the anti-Trump offensive in a speech on Thursday.
According to excerpts from the speech reported by The New York Times, Romney called Trump “a phony, a fraud”, and said, “He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.”
He has already called for Trump’s tax returns to be made public, suggesting in a TV interview in the run-up to the Super Tuesday contests that there was a “bombshell” in there somewhere.
of Representative Speaker Paul Ryan, the topmost elected Republican in the country, slammed Trump last week for an evasive answer on white supremacists in a TV interview.
And Mitch McConnell, a Re publican heading the Senate, followed up, noting disapprovingly the “seeming ambivalence” of “one of our presidential candidates”.