Former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele warned that Republicans are on a dangerous path by bending the knee to Donald Trump because they are alienating key voters and his supporters alone cannot sustain the party going forward.
On Tuesday, MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist noted that Nikki Haley picked up about 40 percent of the vote in the South Carolina GOP primary.
Though not a massive number, it shows that a fraction of Republicans and independents will not support Trump which could cause trouble for the former president and the Republican party in November.
“It’s how you grind yourself down as a national party into the dust of nothing,” Steele said.
“There is no real runway here to sustain long term growth prospects for the Republican Party with Donald Trump as its head,” he added.
But, Steele does not see Haley as a worthy successor either noting that “40% is not a real number.”
“I mean, when you’ve got Democrats and Independents who are voting in your primary, in a Republican primary, you have to say something to yourself about, where is my base?,” he said.
“You know, when 22 percent of that 40 percent was actually independents and Democrats who were in that, who voted in Nikki’s South Carolina primary,” Steele added. “So, she lost her home state among Republicans by a much bigger number. And so then the question becomes — how do you translate that into a national campaign for Super Tuesday?”
Trump has won every Republican primary contest so far but experts say his dominance of the primary mask his weakness heading into the November presidential.
