Republican Party Will Not Be Tricked Into 'Standards' By Some Dork Polling At One Percent, TYVM

It's adorable that they're pretending they're not about to nominate a convicted felon.

 You will vote for President Crime Boss, and you will LIKE IT! That was the message the Republican National Committee delivered to former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who is pretending to run for president on the GOP ticket.

Hutchinson was already having enough trouble meeting the RNC's criteria to get on the debate stage for the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee on August 23. He's currently meeting the 1 percent polling threshold, by the skin of his teeth . The requirement that he "have a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to candidate’s principal presidential campaign committee (or exploratory committee), with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20+ states and/or territories" is looking dicier .

And then he violated the cardinal rule of today's Republican Party:  Thou shalt not have any minimum standards for acceptable conduct when it comes to your compatriots. 

On Wednesday, Hutchinson said that he would not support Trump as the nominee if he were found guilty of a federal crime.

“I’m not going to vote for him if he’s a convicted felon,” Hutchinson told Politico . “‘I’m not going to vote for him if he’s convicted of espionage, and I’m not going to vote for him if he’s (convicted of) other serious crimes. And I’m not going to support him.”

That put him on a collision course with the RNC, which is currently requiring a pledge to support the party's eventual nominee as the price of admission to the debate. But Hutchinson said he planned to seek a change in that language in light of Trump's recent indictment for storing national security information in his pool locker.

“They need to put a little rationality to what is said in that oath or that pledge,” he told Politico as he tumbled off the back of a turnip truck and brushed the dirt off his knees.

Trump himself has notably failed to agree to this condition, but we don't talk about Donno , as Hutchinson was shortly to discover. On a call with the RNC yesterday, Hutchinson's staffers were told in no uncertain terms that this requirement would not be caveated with hypotheticals, and certainly not for some also-ran trying to wrest the party back to some kind of minimum standard.

 Politico reports:

In a statement, RNC senior adviser Richard Walters said the GOP primary candidates are only “being asked to respect the decision of Republican primary voters and support the eventual nominee.”

“Candidates who are complaining about this to the press should seriously reconsider their priorities and whether they should even be running,” Walters said.

The other Republican contenders are taking the opportunity to prove that they are exactly who everyone always thought they were, with Christ Christie snorting that he'll sign the pledge and take it “as seriously as Donald Trump did eight years ago," i.e. not very , and Mike Pence's people taking the principled stand that, “We want President Trump on the debate stage, because we think this would be a good contrast for us.”

(They asked that guy Larry Elder , too, but if we cared enough to tell you his opinion, we'd have to first remind you who he is, and honestly, who can be bothered?)

Anyway, remember back in 2016 when the DNC was accused of being in the tank for Hillary and a bunch of Democrats stayed home in disgust? LOL.

[ Politico ]

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