Reince Priebus has been such a joke as head of the RNC, even Ben Carson mocks him calling him Rinse Pubis. A Trump nomination could be good news for one reason anyway. He’d consider dumping Priebus if he’s the nominee to take on Crooked Hillary. Wouldn’t that be great?
| A Trump nomination could mean to end of Priebus |
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Yeah, really? Right at the moment that he’ll be begging the Republican establishment to go all-in for him against Hillary Clinton, he’s going to start lopping off heads? It’s not like Trump has some gangbusters national organization that doesn’t need institutional help from party apparatchiks in turning voters out. Just the opposite, actually. If he pushes Reince out, he might find RNC officials bailing out left and right. What happens then?
What we’re really considering here is the classic question raised in the aftermath of any successful coup. Which members of the old regime do you liquidate and which do you keep around because they know how things are run and their continued presence signals stability to the wider population?
I’m going to file this under “the art of the deal,” i.e. this is Trump’s way of warning Reince that he’ll pay the price if the RNC tries to screw him somehow at the convention. How they might screw him, though, I don’t know. It’s the delegates, not the RNC, who write the rules of the convention; if a rule passes that damages Trump, he’ll have Cruz’s delegates to blame, not Priebus. Whether Trump understands that and is just using the RNC as an establishment scapegoat or whether he genuinely doesn’t understand, only he knows. I’ll confess my own ignorance, though, in noting that I’m not sure what power Trump himself would have as nominee to force Priebus out if he wants his own people in. An elected president typically has great influence over who his party names as party chair since he expects maximum cooperation in fundraising over the following four years, but Trump will merely be nominee, not president. And while the members of the RNC might support the nominee over the sitting chairman in a power struggle during normal circumstances, Trump is sufficiently unorthodox and disliked among Republican power brokers that they might stand by Priebus. Maybe all Trump means is that he’d ask for Priebus’s resignation and expect the Committee to elect a replacement of his choice. But … who would he replace Priebus with? Who’s better positioned than Reince to squeeze money out of Republican billionaires who are lukewarm about Trump? Reince is his pipeline to establishment checkbooks. He’d be a fool to cut that pipeline when he’ll be desperate to raise money to keep pace with Hillary.