The head of the Republican National Committee on Sunday forcefully denounced efforts by some Republicans to find a third-party candidate to mount an independent bid for the White House.
“It’s a suicide mission,” RNC chairman Reince Priebus said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “You’re not only changing and throwing out eight years of the White House, but you’re also throwing out potentially generations on the Supreme Court. Look, we could have up to three justices change over the next eight years.”
Many prominent Republicans, including the party’s 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have made no secret of their disdain for the 2016 presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, a prominent neoconservative pundit, also has been pretty open about his attempt to recruit an alternative to Trump, whom he has called a “pathological narcissist and liar.”
The Washington Post on Saturday described a frantic, behind-the-scenes effort by Kristol and others to find a Republican willing to mount a third-party challenge.
Potential recruits include Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a freshman who has emerged in recent months as one of Trump’s sharpest critics in Congress. (Over the weekend, party loyalist at his home-state convention rebuked Sasse's efforts, overwhelming passing a resolution that opposes calls for a third-party candidate.)
Priebus on Sunday called on Republicans to follow the lead of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who has not endorsed Trump but met last week with the real-estate mogul.
Priebus said party leaders should “work with Donald Trump and find out whether or not there's common ground and whether there can be assurances on the Supreme Court and those sorts of things to make sure that our future is secure down the line, as opposed to blowing everything up.”
