Minnesota’s GOP Leaders Rattled as Trump’s Support Grows

Minnesota’s GOP Leaders Rattled as Trump’s Support Grows

Donald Trump giving a speech to supporters.

Matt Rourke, Associated Press File

By Patrick Condon

March 6, 2016

Excerpts

Republicans at the Minnesota caucuses handed [Donald] Trump his only third-place finish, living up to the state’s history of going its own way politically. Unfortunately for the Republicans who voted for Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida or Ted Cruz of Texas, they still stand a good chance of getting stuck with Trump. …

As Trump racks up wins across the country, his success threatens to unravel the GOP. Some of his GOP critics want a brokered convention to block him. But that maneuver would alienate millions of Trump’s supporters, many of whom have little allegiance to the party. …

Mark Drake, who previously worked for [former Gov. Tim] Pawlenty, former Sen. Norm Coleman and the GOP locally and nationally, cited a number of Trump’s more outrageous plans or actions for why many in the GOP are so uneasy: His call for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S.; his ridicule of Sen. John McCain for having been a POW; his initial refusal to denounce white supremacist David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. …

Why the disdain for Trump? [Charlie Weaver, a business lobbyist and onetime top aide to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty] … called him “a self-centered bully.” Coleman called him a fraud, a misogynist, and frightening. Former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber, a powerful Washington lobbyist, called Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants “deeply, morally offensive.” … Full report