Conservative columnist George Will is calling on the GOP to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, even if he wins the nomination.
“Donald Trump’s damage to the Republican Party, although already extensive, has barely begun,” Will wrote in a new Washington Post column Saturday.
Will warns a Trump nomination would create “down-ballot carnage” that could end Republican control of the House.
{mosads}“At least half a dozen Republican senators seeking reelection and Senate aspirants can hope to win if the person at the top of the Republican ticket loses their state by, say, only four points, but not if he loses by 10,” Will wrote, saying Trump would be the most unpopular nominee ever.
He calls on voters in upcoming primary states, Indiana and California, to vote for Ted Cruz, to “make the Republican convention a deliberative body rather than one that merely ratifies decisions made elsewhere, some of them six months earlier.”
“A convention’s sovereign duty is to choose a plausible nominee who has a reasonable chance to win, not to passively affirm the will of a mere plurality of voters recorded episodically in a protracted process.”
He adds, however, that if Trump wins the nomination, the GOP should work instead toward cutting presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton’s term to four years.
“If Clinton gives her party its first 12 consecutive White House years since 1945, Republicans can help Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, or someone else who has honorably recoiled from Trump, confine her to a single term.”
Will has been a constant critic of Trump throughout the campaign, saying previously his nomination would be the “end” of the Republican party.
Trump has shot back at Will, accusing him of being “biased.”
“Broken down political pundit @GeorgeWill, who is wrong almost all of the time, should be thrown off @FoxNews. Boring and totally biased,” Trump tweeted in November.