California Could Be GOP Elite’s Last Stand Against Trump

The political analysts at CalBuzz, a California-based political news website, report that the Republican Party elites are so terrified of Donald Trump winning the nomination that they are prepared to wage a scorched-earth campaign to deny him the delegates he needs to secure a majority before the party convention in Cleveland this summer.

They are prepared, therefore, to fight every state to the bitter end, trashing their own party in the process.

From CalBuzz:

For [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and the rest of the D.C. Republicans, it’s now all about survival and maintaining their majorities in Congress. They’re smart enough to understand that if Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party, he will have a toxic effect on Senate (24 GOP, 10 Dem) races and, to a lesser extent, House races across the country.

If Trump goes into the GOP National Convention in Cleveland this summer with less than a majority of the delegates needed to win nomination on the first ballot, Washington Republicans and their Establishment patrons would rather take the nomination away from Trump and give it to someone who would do less damage to the rest of the Republicans running even if it splinters the GOP.

A divided Republican Party – and a Democratic president – would do less damage to the GOP agenda than would having Trump lose, and drag down other Republicans across the country. So the party regulars would rather purge the GOP of the Trump wing and suffer the divisions, than lose control of the Senate and weaken their power in the House.

On the other hand, Trump could rack up enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland. In which case, Frankenstein’s monster wins.

California could be key to that plan, which would likely revolve around Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has set himself up as the new “anti-Trump.” (Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is also fighting Trump, but is also loathed by the party elite.) As Breitbart California’s Jon Fleischman explained a year ago, delegate-rich California has a formula that favors moderates. Unless Trump wins a majority before then, the Golden State could be the GOP elites’ last stand.