The bad blood could anger the very people who will run the convention where Trump hopes to be nominated, while also potentially demoralizing state party leaders who make up the RNC. They are the tip of a fundraising and grassroots spear Trump would need to wield should he make it to the general election.
“When you want to take a girl to the prom, you don’t tell her the week before that she’s ugly,” said Henry Barbour, an RNC member from Mississippi who is neutral in the primary race…
“Even if there’s an apparent nominee by mid-May, that’s a really small amount of time to plan this,” he said. “There will be a huge amount of pressure just to think of, let alone plan to the campaigns’ satisfaction, everything that you have to.”
Unlike in normal presidential years when the presumptive nominee’s campaign typically takes over most of the responsibility for planning the convention’s program, that task is also likely to fall on the RNC this year.
“In a traditional year, the nominee’s campaign would have great input, if not control, on how best to showcase the nominee and his or her strengths,” Ginsberg said. “If there is no clear nominee heading into Cleveland, there is an endless set of possibilities to be worked through, presumably by the RNC and the multiple campaigns in terms of the convention details.”
