DES MOINES, Iowa — Donald Trump’s relentless assault on the rules that govern how Republicans choose their nominee is coming far too late to change what even defenders acknowledge is a complicated selection system.
He seems to know it, too.
Instead, his railing against a “rigged” process appears aimed at amplifying his central message to an angry electorate: America is a mess, and only Trump can clean it up.
In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, he equated the party’s nomination procedures with the “unfair trade, immigration and economic policies that have also been rigged against Americans.”
He added: “Let me ask America a question: How has the ‘system’ been working out for you and your family?”
Underlying the constant criticism, Trump’s goal is to rally supporters and pile up primary season victories that would bring him the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright before the summer convention. But it’s a tactic that Republicans say carries real risks for the billionaire businessman.
Should Trump fall short of that clinching number going into the Cleveland convention in July, they said, his rantings against the party are likely to annoy the delegates who would then decide the nominee.
“He is trying to pit voters against the very people who make the decision of whether he gets the nomination,” said Matt Borges, chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio. “If he does not arrive in Cleveland with 1,237 pledged delegates, then there is no way he gets the nomination.”
Trump says he has all the tools he needs to assuage any annoyed delegates.
“Nobody has better toys than I do,” Trump told attendees Sunday at a Staten Island Republican county brunch.
“I can fly (delegates) on the best planes and take them to the best resorts around,” including his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. “You’re basically buying these people. You’re basically saying, ‘Delegates, listen we’re going to send you to Mar-a-Lago on a Boeing 757, you’re going to use the spa, you’re going to this, you’re going to that.’ That’s a corrupt system. That’s not a democracy.”
Trump’s tirades have aired the backroom tension with the party. But Republican officials are pushing against the front-runner’s accusations of unfairness.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus took to Trump’s favorite medium, Twitter, to make the point that the nomination process has been known to all for more than a year.
“It’s the responsibility of the campaigns to understand it,” Priebus wrote. “Complaints now? Give us all a break.”
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