Trump’s Bully Pulpit His threats to blow up the July convention are a sign of weakness.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-bully-pulpit-1461022619
Donald Trump says he wants to unite the Republican Party, but he keeps acting as if he’s mounting a hostile takeover. He’s now threatening to blow up the party’s July convention because he and his campaign were too lazy or inept to understand the 50 state nomination rules.
That’s the story behind Mr. Trump’s complaints that the party’s nominating rules are “rigged” against him. “It’s a crooked system. It’s 100% corrupt,” the front-runner howled on Sunday following a Friday op-ed on these pages making the same claims. He added on Sunday that he hopes a contested GOP convention in July “doesn’t involve violence.” Thanks for the warning.
Mr. Trump is upset that he’s being outhustled in winning delegates, and that he may fall short of the 1,237 he needs to win a majority in July. His latest embarrassment came at the Wyoming state convention on Saturday as Ted Cruz won the 14 delegates up for grabs. Mr. Cruz was the only candidate to show up in Casper, where he added to the nine (of 12 available) delegates awarded last month at county meetings. Mr. Trump, who said he didn’t want to “waste money going to Wyoming,” now claims Mr. Cruz won thanks to “party bosses.”
This is the same line the New Yorker leveled at the Colorado GOP, which also uses county and state conventions (rather than a popular vote) to elect delegates, and which recently awarded Mr. Cruz a delegate sweep. Yet both state processes were transparent and well known to all campaigns since last year.
In Wyoming’s case, “every presidential candidate for the last 40 years has managed this process and has worked through this process and has followed the process,” state GOP Chairman Matt Micheli told Fox News. Having failed to organize well enough to compete on these open terms, Mr. Trump is inventing complaints that such caucuses are “voterless.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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