CPAC chief: Trump offers ‘new model’
Leading conservative says his chances of nomination are 75%
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. In the wake of Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday victories, a leading conservative organizer puts the odds at 75% that the real-estate mogul will be able to claim the presidential nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in July — and he says there’s little that wealthy GOP donors dismayed by that prospect can do to block it.
“You’ve got these billionaires who are trying to stop the billionaire, and they seem to be impotent to actually have an effect on the process,” says Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. The group hosts the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, which opened Wednesday in suburban Maryland and will feature appearances by all the Republican candidates. “Trump has really caught on to this political moment in this country and this movement out there, and this movement is very anti-the-fatcats and the big-wigs and the rich folks and the DC insiders.”
Conservatives aren’t yet sure whether Trump is a conservative, Schlapp told Capital Download, and they don’t know whether he can be trusted to deliver on his campaign promises, But the former reality-TV star still has captured the political moment.
“This is what’s hard with an outsider, because outsiders don’t have voting records,” Schlapp, a former White House political director for George W. Bush, told USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series. “But the way I look at it is this — which is a lot of conservatives have pushed forward elected officeholders who have disappointed them when they get in office, both the White House and Senate, Congress. And they seem very open to the idea, ‘We’re going to try a whole new model, we’re going to try someone from outside the system.’ And I kind of think there’s no stopping that. ...
“I think conservatives across this country are holding pitchforks.”
Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio are scheduled to address CPAC on Saturday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Friday.
Schlapp thinks it’s possible there will be a contested GOP convention, with no candidate arriving with a majority of delegates. But he dismisses the idea of what he calls a “brokered” con- vention, where someone who hasn’t been running for president is suddenly put forward as the nominee.
A year ago, Schlapp thought former Florida governor Jeb Bush might have a good chance of winning conservative support for his presidential bid.
“Boy, was I wrong,” he says now. “I don’t think Jeb and his team understood the political moment. I think that they were running as what they saw as a conservative candidate in the mold of the 1980s, the 1990s — soften it, be careful, reach out to the middle. After seven years of (President) Obama, conservatives really don’t want to hear that. What they want to hear is what (former president) Ronald Reagan talked to us about: ‘Bold colors, not pale pastels.’
“Boy, did Donald Trump understand the moment.”