As its long-running and often hostile presidential nominating process drags on, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus delivered an impassioned appeal for party members to close ranks behind whomever wins the nomination.
“It’s essential to victory in November that we all support our candidate,” Priebus said in a speech Friday to the party’s leadership gathered in Hollywood, Florida. “This goes for everyone, whether you’re a county party chairman, an RNC member, or a presidential candidate.”
The chairman’s remarks during the committee’s full business meeting came on the final day of a three-day gathering at an ocean-side resort where the RNC’s 168 members assembled for their last time before hosting their national convention in July.
“As our nomination process goes on, we are preparing for all possible scenarios,” Priebus said. “We might have a nominee by July, or we might have a nominee through the balloting process at the convention.”
As Donald Trump continues to argue that he should win the nomination because he has the most delegates, Priebus gave no ground on the possibility of a contested convention that could result in another candidate winning the race.
“The rules say you have to have 1,237 delegates to be the nominee. We aren’t going to hand the nomination to anyone with a plurality, no matter how close they get to 1,237,” he said. “Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
Priebus pledged that the party would run a “fair, democratic and transparent convention” in Cleveland, as he pointed to Abraham Lincoln’s nomination as well as his own.
“It took Abraham Lincoln three ballots to get a majority in 1860,” he said. “Heck, it took me seven ballots to become chairman of the RNC.”
The chairman also pointed to Lincoln’s own administration as a model for his currently fractured party, saying that the president’s rivals “didn’t just take their marbles and go home” when they did not win. Instead, they “worked together because they knew it was the right thing to do for the country.”
Targeting the Democratic presidential front-runner, Priebus presented Hillary Clinton as the relic of the past and pointed to the controversy surrounding her private e-mail server.
“We know she wants to appoint a left-wing justice to the Supreme Court who will make President Obama’s lawless presidency permanent and treat the Constitution as a doormat,” he said. “Our party is focused on the future, but she wants to drag us back to the 1990s again. I’m sure her server probably still used Windows 95.”
