Republican Elites Land in South Carolina With No Plan to Stop Trump

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Bloomberg:

Republican elites are 0-for-2 in presidential nominating contests this year, a rare and panic-inducing outcome for the party's leadership. Yet their preferred candidates continue to fight each other, and have begun the march to the next battlefield in South Carolina without a plan to stop Donald Trump.

 

Not only did the billionaire's 20-point blowout in the New Hampshire primary fail to cull the field enough to present a clear mainstream alternative, the three remaining establishment candidates—U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor—spent the following days going after one another, as they have throughout the nomination fight.

“Enormous pressure is on the establishment wing to consolidate around one candidate soon or else it will hand the Republican nomination over to Trump,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and former senior congressional aide.

 

They're running out of time. With plenty of campaign cash to spare, Trump is pushing the kind of nationalistic message on immigration and foreign policy that resonates in South Carolina, a state that flew the Confederate flag on its capitol grounds until last year. The primaries beyond are just as southern and just as friendly to Trump's message. And he remains an extremely difficult candidate to beat in a war of words and media attention.

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Republican leadership in the wilderness.