PARK CITY, Utah — Mitt Romney warned that a Donald Trump presidency could normalize racism, misogyny and bigotry in the national conscience. Businesswoman Meg Whitman compared the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Adolf Hitler. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was asked, uncomfortably, how he could explain his endorsement of Trump to a young child.
Then came Trump’s boosters, awkwardly imploring about 300 business executives and Republican establishment donors and strategists gathered for Romney’s annual ideas festival to unite for the fall campaign.
In a stroke of defiance, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared that Trump and the Republicans would win in November “with or without you,” according to attendees.
So went the three-day Romney-hosted E2 summit that concluded Saturday in this luxurious mountaintop resort. The confab put on stark display the Republican Party’s moral and philosophical divisions over its new standard-bearer and underscored the difficulty that Trump and allies such as Priebus will have to consolidate forces at the start of a general election in which Democrat Hillary Clinton is favored.
‘GAME OF THRONES’
Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier who was one of Romney’s top funders in 2012, came to Park City seeking to galvanize his old friends to help him raise money for Trump. He likened the atmosphere here to the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones.”
“I feel like Jon Snow, trying to get the Wildlings to team up with the kings of the castles,” Scaramucci said.
Recalling what he told Romney loyalists, Scaramucci said: “Your father just got slayed by your uncle, whom you don’t really like, and your uncle is now in charge. You’ve got the White Walkers descending from the north and they’re coming to hunt you and all the living. What do you do? Do you fight with your uncle or band together and fight the White Walkers?”
‘TRICKLE-DOWN RACISM’
Romney made clear he would rather fight his uncle, figuratively speaking. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee was emotional Saturday as he delivered an impassioned case against Trump.
He said the business mogul’s campaign rhetoric – the latest example being his accusations of bias by a federal judge because of his Mexican American heritage – is so destructive that it is fraying at the nation’s moral fabric and could lead to “trickle-down racism.”
“I love what this country is built upon, and its values – and seeing this is breaking my heart,” Romney told the summit attendees.
Trump punched back at Romney at his Saturday rally in Tampa, calling him “poor, sad, Mitt Romney” and a “stone-cold loser.”
Scaramucci and other Romney associates, including Ron Kaufman, a longtime RNC member from Massachusetts, have pleaded with Romney to tone down his opposition in the interest of party unity.
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