Park City Debate Topic: Who's To Blame For The Rise Of Trump?

Ah... the good old days

What can we say about a bunch of rich Republican donors coming together at posh Stein Eriksen Lodge in Park City, Utah to moan about Donald Trump? These are a bunch of super-bad players and their pain is well-deserved, even if we sympathize with their disdain for Trump. There wasn't any talk over the weekend at the Romney summit about how they created the environment that proven such fertile soil for Trumpism with their support for a deranged, power-mad Republican Party and it's well-funded media/thank tank appendages. Meg Whitman admitted she'll probably vote for the more reliable status quo-- as in conservative-- candidate: Hillary Clinton. Oh, the pain! Or was rgar the other Republican Whitman, Christie Todd, former governor of New Jersey?

Romney, wrote Philip Rucker "delivered an impassioned case against Trump. He said the business mogul’s campaign rhetoric-- the latest example being his accusations of bias by a federal judge because of his Mexican American heritage-- is so destructive that it is fraying at the nation’s moral fabric and could lead to 'trickle-down racism.'" No on pointed out that the GOP has been all about trickle-down racism since Nixon's Southern Strategy became the official Republican campaign handbook. Romney said watching Trump is breaking his heart. Trump, on the campaign trail, sadistically referred to 47% Mitt as "poor, sad, Mitt Romney... a stone-cold loser" and tweeted that when he ran his own losing campaign he "choked like a dog," whatever that means.

Mitt Romney warned that a Donald Trump presidency could normalize racism, misogyny and bigotry in the national conscience. Businesswoman Meg Whitman compared the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Adolf Hitler. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was asked, uncomfortably, how he could explain his endorsement of Trump to a young child.

Poor Paul! He should think more about how he could explain his reactionary, austerity approach to governance that greased the way for the rise of a Trump to the young child his agenda threatens so deeply.

Scaramucci and other Romney associates supportive of Trump, including Ron Kaufman, a longtime RNC member from Massachusetts, have pleaded with Romney to tone down his opposition in the interest of party unity.

“If Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt could get together to defeat Adolf Hitler, we can end the schism in our party,” Scaramucci said. “We’ve got to change the rhetoric and the nonsense that’s going on in the party right now. We have to unify this party.”

Priebus, Scaramucci and restaurant executive Andy Puzder, another Romney ally raising money for Trump, were in Park City to try to build out Trump’s fundraising operation, which got off to a late start and has been slow to ramp up. They sought to allay worries about Trump’s discipline, electability and character-- and even joked with prospects about overseas ambassadorships being available in a Trump administration.

Scaramucci said that summit attendees were “going nuts” about Trump’s attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel but that he told them privately: “I understand that sometimes when he’s speaking it can send a charge signal. But I’ve known him for two decades and I know his children. He is not a racist.”

...Among Romney loyalists, however, the appeals from Trump’s team have had limited success.

“They would like to see a unified party, but if I hear anything consistently, it’s country before party,” said Spencer Zwick, a Romney confidant and his former national finance chairman, who helps run the E2 summit.

That was the argument Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, made when she questioned Ryan about his endorsement of Trump and compared the candidate to fascist leaders Hitler and Benito Mussolini, according to attendees.

Texas businessman L.E. Simmons, a close Romney friend who helped raise millions of dollars for his last campaign, said he was in no rush to decide whether to support Trump.

“He couldn’t have done a worse job in his first month” since securing enough delegates to claim the nomination, Simmons said of Trump. “I think he missed a golden opportunity to pivot. There’s a lot of people who really want it to work, but they’re not going to say, ‘Trump at any cost.’”

A good capper was Romney blaming the hollow GOP Deep Bench of lame candidates who proven impotent in the face of Trump's childish fascism during the primary. He told Wof Blitzer that "Cruz was basically praising Donald Trump through the whole process until the very end" and that Kasich unstrategic enough to stay in "well after the time there was no possible pathway to becoming the nominee." He was applauded heavily by the handpicked audience of wealthy Republicans. Romney was emotionally overcome during his denunciations of Trump and nearly weeped several times. Sad-- oh, and by the way, #NeverTrump: