Look, I’m always for giving credit where credit is due, but there is simply too much water under the bridge for me to buy into the idea Priebus is now a stellar Conservative.
What did Priebus do to stop Obama from doing anything at all? Point me to a series of statements or a book or anything that trashing Obama for who he was.
Where did the GOPe idea come from? It came from the GOP leaders in the East (or some refer to it as the Executives) of the party and their antics over the years.
Who are those leaders? In 2016, they were Rince Priebus, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell.
When a candidate last year was winning the Republican Caucuses, at whose direction and control was that taking place? It was the GOPe.
Rience Priebus was elbow deep in that. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been talking place. He controlled the purse strings and the party leaders.
Trump had a massive ground game. His rallies were getting 10-25,000 attendees. He could announce a new rally a couple of days ahead, and fill the venue with thousands still outside.
Who was helping him do that? NOBODY!!!!
All of a sudden Rience is getting credit for the ground game, and even Ted Cruz’ supporters try to state he is also responsible for the Trump win.
N O T . B U Y I N G . A N Y . O F . T H A T !
Hogwash!
Trump, Kelly Ann Conway, and his other workers and supporters did the heavy lifting.
McConnell, Ryan, Priebus..., were not Trump’s biggest supporters, didn’t not win anything for him, and are suspect of being the same old people they always were, right now! Right this very minute.
Trump didn’t back off his original promise with regard to health care on a whim. He was sold a bill of goods, by two insiders or former insiders. He was told a clean repeal would never pass, and he went for it.
I don’t care what you read, but what you just laid out for me is as counter to what Ryan and Priebus had been doing for years. Priebus didn’t all of a sudden get religion on Trump. He’s a closet Lefty. He’ll always be a closet Lefty.
I don’t trust the man any further than I can drop kick him.
I hear folks talking about Ryan’s plan as if it’s solid. I hear folks talking up Priebus. Folks, who were our adversaries within the party, if these two were on our side?
Never standing up to Obama, and almost always standing up against us, there is not chance in hell these two are now solid Conservatives.
B. S.
DoughtyOne, I understand you are upset, but I’ve never seen anyone here or elsewhere claim that Priebus is a “stellar Conservative.” And this really is about giving credit where it’s clearly due. You can ignore the facts in favor of an imagined story-line, if it makes you feel better and let’s you get your disappointment over the health care bill off your chest. Trump, however, has gratefully acknowledged all that Priebus did for his campaign and called him a “superstar” in his victory speech even. The Trump campaign had a lot of excitement, which was certainly very important, but almost zero ground game. The RNC was his ground game, and under Priebus they made tremendously more phone calls and door knocks than they did for Romney in 2012 and did them in a much more intelligent and informed way.
It was undeniably important that immediately after Romney’s loss in 2012 Priebus worked hard to drastically revamp the GOP’s data efforts, emulating Obama’s excelling information gathering operation by identifying millions of voters and what their concerns and demographics were in order to find ways to get them to the polls to vote Republican. Once the general election began, he sent many more trained, on the ground operatives to the swing states to work on behalf of Trump and the other Republican candidates than had been used in 2012. He had Sean Spicer spending tremendous amounts of time with the Trump campaign to ensure that the RNC and the campaign were always on the same page. Please, remember how very close the swing states were this time around, and how a shift of less than 100,000 votes total in the right places could have made Hillary president. Trump needed the help of experienced pros working in targeted ways in the most important states. Not to mention all the times that Priebus actually campaigned with Trump in person.
I don’t know what you mean by “Cruz supporters.” I’ve been a Trump supporter since 2015 and used to fight the most extreme Cruzers tooth and nail when they attacked Trump unfairly back in the day (as I still defend Trump often on FR). And by the way, don’t you remember that it was Reince who threatened former candidates who broke “the pledge” to endorse Trump with no more funding from the RNC? Within a week after he did that, Cruz changed his mind and endorsed Trump. I recall too that Priebus supported Trump as the “presumptive nominee” as soon as he won the Indiana primary, even though there was a month left before the primaries were officially over and some Cruz supporters still tried to get Cruz in via a rules change at the convention. Priebus putting his weight behind Trump as soon as possible made it hard for anyone to question his position as the nominee.
You seem to think with no evidence at all that Priebus tried to help Cruz (whom few in Washington can stand) during the caucuses, but if you bother looking into it, you will see that it was the state GOP establishments that were putting their fingers on scale for Cruz. What we have actual evidence of is that Priebus was a good Trump advocate at the first second that he legitimately could be, who helped keep Cruz and his people (and perhaps even more importantly, members of the GOP establishment) from derailing Trump, his nomination, and his campaign.
Look, I even explicitly said Reince has an establishment taint and should be kept an eye on, but he is a Trump loyalist and should be given credit for doing all that he possibly could to get Trump elected. You can blame him for the health care debacle, but we already know that it was Paul Ryan who was instrumental in selling this to Trump as the only way to get something passed and insisting that he would definitely get the votes for it. I haven’t seen any proof yet that Priebus had any truly significant role in convincing Trump to go along. Maybe he did, but I would much prefer to focus on trying to push out Ryan, the one who undeniably botched this and who—very much unlike Priebus—attacked Trump during the campaign. And remember, the Chief of Staff is an important administrative role, but has not traditionally been a policy making or advising position.
And what did Priebus do to fight Obama? He did everything he could to get Republicans elected during his term in office and especially in 2016, where they could help overturn Obama’s legacy (well, they’ll do more of that than the Dems would have at any rate). And he was remarkably successful in that—possibly the best in that regard we’ve ever had at the RNC. And as I said, I didn’t read Wead’s book; I was following these things closely in real time.