Establishment War on Trump Threatens Rift

Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday sought to tamp down suggestions of an impending civil war in the GOP, but the comments of several Establishment stalwarts indicate the war has already has begun.

Priebus denied on “This Week with George Stephanopoulous” that party officials have any plan to steal the presidential nomination from front-runner Donald Trump. He noted that delegates are obligated — at least on the first ballot — to back the candidate to whom they are pledged.

“And so, those are the rules that are laid out,” he said. “And there are no plans to undo the rules, or change the nomination process midstream.”

But several GOP leaders, embracing the #NeverTrump movement, sounded anything but willing to unify the party. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Mitt Romney called a contested convention a “realistic scenario.”

On “Meet the Press,” Romney claimed credit for Trump’s failure to win all four states up for grabs Saturday. Romney delivered a blistering diatribe against Trump on Thursday.

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“I think it had a big impact,” he said. “A lot of people were surprised by how well Ted Cruz did. He got more delegates than Donald Trump last night. He was ebullient. Donald Trump was uncharacteristically low energy.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on “Meet the Press” that he would do the unthinkable to stop Trump — support Sen. Ted Cruz.

“I would prefer (Gov. John Kasich) or (Sen. Marco Rubio) over Cruz,” he said. “If Ted’s the alternative over Trump, he’s at least a Republican conservative … If Donald Trump is the nominee of the party, we’ll get killed; we’ll get creamed.”

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On “Fox News Sunday,” Romney warned all manner of harm should Trump become president, from making the country less safe to causing a recession.

“I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure one of those three (Cruz, Rubio or Kasich) is the nominee,” he said.

And if Trump does capture the nomination?

He said on “Meet the Press” that Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton both are “pretty darn bad” but dismissed talk of plans to set up an independent or third-party run. Should it come to it, he said on Fox, “then I’m probably going to go to the voting booth and find someone else who’s running as a conservative or perhaps just write in the name of someone I believe should become the president of the United States.”

Priebus expressed confidence on “Face the Nation” that the party will unite behind its nominee, and he said he believes that nominee will win outright through the primary process and avoid a contested convention that could get messy.

“It’s not impossible,” he said. “I still think it’s unlikely. But it’s not impossible … I think that in a month, if we’re sitting in a situation where candidates are tied, then I think in a month you start looking at those possibilities. But right now we’ve got a long way to go.”

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Trump, appearing on “Face the Nation,” called for party unity and raised the specter of a Democratic president remaking the Supreme Court for a generation.

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“I’m very surprised to hear about a third party, because I’m going to appoint conservative judges,” he said. “And a third party would mean that Hillary would win or whoever is going to be running. And you’re going to have liberal judges, probably as many as four, or even five, if you can believe that during this period of time. So a third party means absolutely they will have four or five very liberal judges appointed as opposed to four or five very conservative judges.”

Cruz, on “Face the Nation,” said attempts to deny Trump at the convention if he has the most delegates would backfire.

“If you want to beat him, you have to beat him at the ballot box,” he said.