Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus could have halted the rise of GOp front-runner Donald Trump,
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank said.
Instead, he chose "party unity over morality" by not condemning Trump over the candidate's statements about women and minorities.
Now, Priebus is faced with a divided party. If the party accepts Trump, it's likely to lose the votes of women, minority groups, and immigrants. If the party favors Sen. Ted Cruz, Milbank said that the party faces "a riot by Trump populists and the loss of all but far-right voters."
If the party favors Paul Ryan —
who announced he will not be joining the race — it could lose mainstream voters in the next election, even if that might benefit the party in the long run, Milbank said.
Priebus in January called Trump "a good thing for our party," and he rebutted Trump's claim that Colorado's convention
system to pick the candidate is "rigged."
"It just is what the rule is," Priebus said, according to Fox News.
At the Feb. 14 debate, when Trump, Cruz, and Sen. Marco Rubio argued on stage and called each other liars, Priebus tweeted a different story:
Milbank said Priebus' legacy could be that he turns over the Republican Party to "a populist demagogue or an ideologue loathed even by Republican colleagues."
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