He wants American kids back in school in September but Donald Trump doesn't want to put Republican party faithful in harm's way in August.
Trump pulled the GOP nomination convention that was to be held in North Carolina because the authorities insisted on social distancing requirements. Instead he decided to move the convention to Jacksonville, Florida. Now, fearing the optics of conventioneers on ventilators in the aftermath, Trump has cancelled the convention in Florida.
This will give the Republican National Committee a giant brown hemorrhage. They sunk a fortune of donated money into the Charlotte, N.C. venue before Trump nixxed that, money they couldn't recover. Big donors were reluctant to pony up again for a second-rate venue like Jacksonville. It seems they did. Now that money is also up in smoke as the RNC scrambles to come up with an alternative - digital balloting, mail-in ballots - the stuff Team Trump endlessly criticizes? And who is going to pay for it?
The surprise announcement threw one of the tent-pole moments of Mr. Trump’s re-election effort into limbo, with the president describing in vague terms how the Republicans would hold his renomination in North Carolina and do “other things with tele-rallies and online.” It was an ill-defined sketch of an August week that Mr. Trump once envisioned drawing huge crowds and energizing his struggling bid for a second term.
The convention efforts in both Jacksonville and Charlotte, N.C., which have preoccupied some G.O.P. officials and donors for months, now stand as an object lesson in chaotic planning for a party that prizes its ability to raise money and execute splashy displays.
The president’s sudden focus on health concerns Thursday came after months of playing down the virus. He predicted only three weeks ago that it would “just disappear,” and pushed party officials to proceed with convention plans despite the alarming spike in virus cases in Florida this month. As of this week, Republican officials were still meeting in the state to make the convention a reality.Now Trump is talking about Charlotte, N.C. again. Some sort of gathering to approve the party platform. I think were I a donor I might want him to retake that dementia test again, this time with scrutineers present to make sure Trump doesn't hire someone to take it for him.
Now this is something to really anger the Republican establishment. They were prepared for all the other transgressions but this? I wonder if they will get mad enough to nominate someone sane.
ReplyDeleteNo, Toby, it looks as though they'll go to their Congressional graves before they'll dump Trump.
ReplyDeleteIt was inevitable. Trump was faced with a repeat of Tulsa, as the list of senior Republicans declining their invitations got longer and longer. The old bastards are quite willing to kill off school kids in the fall, but less willing to put themselves at risk. The good news is that the GOP wasted $48 million on this fiasco and Trump's incompetence is becoming clear even to the MAGA cult. You can smell the flop sweat from here.
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Apparently Trump's biggest 2016 donors, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, have confirmed the rumour circulating over the past several months that they're not putting up Dime One to float the Great Orange Bloat this year. The story is on Business Insider this morning behind the now predictable firewall.
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