A Case in Point

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

by Newt Gingrich: There was a perfect lack of self-awareness in the question ABC News had for RNC Chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday, and in the Washington Post editorial his answer sparked.

George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, asked the Republican Party Chair whether he planned to support the Republican nominee if that nominee is Donald Trump. Priebus correctly answered that of course he would. “To me, it’s a no-brainer,” he said.

That obvious response led the Washington Post editorial board to chastise Priebus for “irrational partisanship,” and to urge him to disavow his own party’s frontrunner for the nomination.

The whole episode was reminiscent of the famous (but apocryphal) story of Marie Antoinette: Told that the peasants had no bread, the French queen supposedly replied, “Let them eat cake!”

Today’s news media embarrasses itself with similar decadence. Witnessing the tide of public disgust powering Trump’s candidacy–disgust for a corrupt media elite and a political class that tries to rig the game–the media expects that the GOP find some way to fix it.

It was exemplary of what drives the Trump phenomenon that the “journalist” interrogating Priebus on Sunday was a former Clinton communications director and a Clinton Foundation donor who as recently as 2009 participated in daily calls with partisan Democrat operatives James Carville, Paul Begala, and then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

That’s the profile of the host who now ridiculously asks the Republican Chairman to condemn a potential Republican nominee whose supporters are tired of the partisan Democrat press corps. (It would surely never occur to Stephanopoulos to ask the Democrat Party Chair if she plans to support the compulsively dishonest candidate under FBI investigation who leads the Democrats’ contest.)

The Post editorial was even more absurd than the ABC interview. The Washington political class’s paper of record wants the Republican Party to overrule the will of its voters, who are sick of Washington’s dirty tricks, by orchestrating more dirty tricks.

To Chairman Priebus’s credit and the media’s horror, he is having no part of it. Priebus is the most effective Republican Party Chair in modern times, and recognizes that his job is to run a neutral contest for the nomination and then to do everything possible to support the Republican nominee. He has made it clear from the beginning he will do exactly that.

On Wednesday Priebus described the Post’s hit piece as “the stupidest editorial that I’ve ever seen.” That’s saying a lot, but he might be right. And amazingly, the Washington Post and George Stephanopoulos almost certainly can’t understand why.
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Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

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