At Toned-Down GOP Debate, a Drift Toward Trump
But I do think the words from Priebus were mostly a load of crap. I don't think they plan on supporting 100% and I still believe they will do anything they can to prevent what they don't like, and couldn't care less what the voters think.
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CORAL GABLES, Fla. — A Republican debate here Thursday seemed less like a pivotal turning point in the presidential race than a moment of transition toward an increasingly likely, previously unimaginable outcome.
On one of the biggest stages in politics, the GOP wrestled with accepting an unorthodox and divisive standard-bearer, while that candidate, Donald Trump, urged his skeptics to “be smart and unify” around his candidacy.
“I think, frankly, the Republican establishment, or whatever you want to call it, should embrace what's happening,” Trump said in his opening remarks, citing the new voters he has drawn to the party, among them Democrats and Independents.
As Trump has dominated primary contests and racked up delegates relative to his rivals, a stark and perhaps unprecedented divide has opened between Republicans who would support him as their nominee and those who would not. Some candidates and party loyalists have threatened to take their fight to the convention to stop him, if not to the general election, too.
Introducing the program on the debate stage Thursday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus sought to quiet such chatter while sending a message to party activists and candidates alike.
“We are going to support the nominee of our party, whoever it is, 100 percent,” Priebus said. After all, he implored, wouldn’t any of the Republican candidates “be a world better than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders?”
The party chief’s entreaties came just a week after Mitt Romney, the GOP’s most recent presidential nominee, said he would cast a write-in vote in November rather than vote for Trump. Meanwhile, party donors and activists have mounted a serious and well-funded campaign to take Trump down, if at the eleventh hour.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...mp_129949.html
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