Subject: WaPo: Some GOP elites aren’t quite convinced by Trump charm offensive
From: "Roberts, Kelly" <[email-masked]>
To: Comm_D <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 13:04:00 -0700

Manafort said Trump is assembling teams of communications specialists, schedulers, policy advisers, speechwriters, researchers and liaisons to Capitol Hill, think tanks and other GOP power centers — all traditional campaign elements that had been lacking in Trump’s shoestring structure.

“We couldn’t run a general election with eight people,” Manafort said.

Manafort suggested that the individuals who have been appearing on cable television shows as Trump representatives will begin playing smaller roles as he asserts control over what he called “the narrative.”

“Now we’re transitioning,” Manafort said. “He’s trying to be the nominee and people want to see the entire package.”

Some GOP elites aren’t quite convinced by Trump charm offensive<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-gop-elites-arent-quite-convinced-by-trump-charm-offensive/2016/04/22/3e0e5160-089e-11e6-bdcb-0133da18418d_story.html?postshare=9011461354930998&tid=ss_tw>
Washington Post – Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Dan Balz

Out on the campaign trail, Donald Trump relishes his feud with his own party. He threatened to sue to Republican National Committee. He called its nominating system “rigged,” “deceptive” and “a disgrace.” And he has suggested he might try to depose the party chairman.

But as RNC members gathered at a palatial beach resort here this week, Trump’s aides launched an urgent effort aimed at rebranding the mogul’s persona and thawing hostilities with the skittish party elite.

“We need unity as soon as possible,” said Ed Cox, the New York party chairman and a Trump supporter.

Yet while the charm offensive has made some progress, interviews with dozens of GOP officials here showed that the celebrity billionaire still has to overcome a host of lingering concerns — both about his loyalty to the party as well as his discipline and electability as a candidate.

“We’re the ones that built this party,” said Jonathan Barnett, a national committeeman from Arkansas. “You see so many states where they have never reached out or built an organization. . . . Remember, we’re good people. We’re the grass roots. We’ve been around a long time. And Trump needs us.”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the media following his victory Tuesday in New York’s primary. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Trump’s top campaign aide, Paul Manafort, assured RNC members here that Trump views the party leadership as “partners,” both in raising money and crafting a state-by-state strategy, and that his hot rhetoric has been “a part that he’s been playing” and will soon give way to a more presidential demeanor.

“He gets it,” Manafort told RNC members in a closed-door briefing Thursday.

[Trump is playing ‘a part’ and can transform for victory, aide says]

Some members were skeptical of Manafort’s pitch.

“Trump keeps saying that he’s going to be so presidential that he’ll put you to sleep,” said Jose Cunningham, chairman of the District of Columbia GOP. “He loves to say that. His people say he’ll do that, have that demeanor. I’d still like to see that because, well, we haven’t.”

Trump himself is taking steps to repair relations. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called the billionaire mogul on Wednesday to congratulate him on his blow-out victory in the New York primary.

“We had a great talk, no problem,” Priebus said in an interview. “Donald Trump is conciliatory. You notice he hasn’t been saying ‘RNC’ lately. He hasn’t been saying that lately. He certainly hasn’t been talking about me lately.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus addresses the RNC’s spring meeting on Friday in Hollywood, Fla. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)
Priebus acknowledged that there likely are political benefits for Trump to rail against the process and use the RNC as a foil.

“They’ve made a calculation somehow that it works, ginning people up over accusations that the delegate selection process is ‘rigged,’” Priebus said. “I don’t think they would be doing it on a lark.”

Priebus said that the process is not skewed against Trump: “Nothing’s rigged, just like nothing was rigged in New York when the top vote getter got 60 percent of the vote but received 90 percent of the delegates.”

Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric fits into his broader playbook to run against what he sees as corruption across the economic and political spectrums. Manafort said in an interview that Trump’s portrayal of the GOP nominating rules “is no different than the rigged economy, the rigged banking system.”

“It fits into the whole narrative of the system is broken and certain types of establishment situations don’t meet the expectations of people,” he said.

[It’s on: Tensions between Trump and the GOP escalate in public fight]

For much of the campaign, the Trump operation seemed to alienate, even shun party officials who are accustomed to courtship by candidates.

Many officials took particular umbrage at Trump’s on-and-off public flirtation with ousting Priebus.

“Stop the attacks on Reince and the RNC leadership,” South Carolina GOP Chairman Matt Moore said. “Reince is the best chairman, I think, in the party’s history, and there is no question that he is the guy to lead us into the general election. Any discussion about a new chairman is completely stupid.”

On that point, Manafort said, “This discussion over the last few weeks has not been an anti-Reince campaign.”

Trump has been outfoxed by his chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, at state conventions and other gatherings where delegates to the national convention are selected. Manafort said Trump is not seeking to upend the existing rules, but believes the system lacks transparency and is trying to lay the groundwork for changes in future years.

Cruz as well as Ohio Gov. John Kasich addressed the RNC this week. Also present were leaders of Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump super PAC, who huddled privately with some members on Friday. The group’s chairwoman, Katie Packer, distributed a memorandum urging party leaders to do everything possible to stop Trump from locking up the nomination.

“It is not too late,” Packer wrote. “You are under no obligation to wrap your arms around a candidate who has not won a majority of GOP votes, or a majority of delegates, and perhaps wouldn’t even be the frontrunner had the original field been much smaller.”

Yet in hallway chatter here, there was a growing sense of resignation about Trump as the nominee.

“I sense that everybody has come around to the position that what we choose is what we choose, and that to have an opponent to Hillary Clinton, you take what you got and you run with it as fast as you can,” said David Norcross, a former RNC general counsel.

[Is it too late for a Donald Trump makeover?]

The conversations in Florida come amid a revamping of Trump’s campaign. Manafort said Trump is assembling teams of communications specialists, schedulers, policy advisers, speechwriters, researchers and liaisons to Capitol Hill, think tanks and other GOP power centers — all traditional campaign elements that had been lacking in Trump’s shoestring structure.

“We couldn’t run a general election with eight people,” Manafort said.

Manafort suggested that the individuals who have been appearing on cable television shows as Trump representatives will begin playing smaller roles as he asserts control over what he called “the narrative.”

“Now we’re transitioning,” Manafort said. “He’s trying to be the nominee and people want to see the entire package.”

Among the newest members of Trump’s team is Rick Wiley, who is well known to RNC members as he served as the committee’s political director in 2012. When he addressed RNC members on Thursday, Wiley sought to emphasize those connections and went out of his way to praise the work of the committee’s staff under Priebus.

Wiley said the party and its nominee would be fully committed to waging a successful fall national campaign. Arguing that the RNC had adapted the organizing model developed by the 2008 Obama campaign, he added, “We are going to inherit a field program second to none.”

In his presentation, Wiley addressed worries among many Republicans that Trump as nominee could lead the party to a catastrophic defeat in the fall, one that could put the Senate majority at risk and cost Republicans House seats.

“You’re going to see this map expand,” he said, contending that Trump’s potential appeal to Reagan Democrats — working-class white voters — could make states in the upper and industrial Midwest that long have been in the Democrats’ column competitive in the fall.

“If we’re playing in these states and we’re winning in some of these states and the Democrats are playing and having to spend money in those states,” he said, “it’s a good thing for us, it’s a good thing for the party.”