Donald Trump needs to work harder to unify the Republican Party — and that’s not just the opinion of his GOP opponents.
Grassroots Republicans supportive of the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, and those gradually warming to his candidacy, say the New York businessman needs a unified party to defeat Hillary Clinton in November.
Trump has openly suggested that he doesn’t need the support of most Republicans to win. He has made that point repeatedly since last week, when House Speaker Paul Ryan, his party’s highest ranking official, announced that he wasn’t yet ready to make an endorsement.
Trump is a populist. He has downplayed the GOP’s conservative roots and views himself as a different kind of Republican, one capable of assembling a new voting coalition that includes supporters Clinton’s rival in the Democratic primary, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
As grassroots Republicans, which includes many ideological conservatives, come to terms with Trump’s nomination, they concede that unity is a two-way street, and that the party owes the billionaire some fealty.
But they say it’s also incumbent upon Trump to cool hostilities and do what winners typically do: Reach out to the vanquished inside the party, tell them how much he needs them in the fall campaign against Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, and make them feel welcome and wanted.
“It’s not going to be a love affair. But it’s grown-ups coming together,” Bill Conley, chairman of the Spartanburg County Republican Party, said over the weekend during an interview with the Washington Examiner while attending the South Carolina GOP convention in Columbia.
Asked specifically whose responsibility it was to forge unity, Conley added: “It’s everybody’s. It’s partially the candidate, to say, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. It’s the leaders that should be saying, okay, this is what we believe in as a party and putting everybody together.”
Carroll Duncan, a GOP activist from Summerville, S.C., said all factions of the party have a duty to proactively work to forge a unified front against Clinton now that the primary campaign is over.
“Mr. Trump needs to come around,” she said. “We’ll do our part on this end; he needs to do his part.”
Trump campaign adviser Ed Brookover agreed that all sides need to work toward unifying the party, but emphasized that Trump won the vote, and with it, the privilege of leadership and a GOP establishment that essentially falls in line behind him.
“It’s a matter of everyone,” he said, adding that party leaders should “acknowledge that the Republicans elected him, voted for him and he earned the right to be the leader of the party, now.”
To further the unification process, Trump and Ryan are scheduled to meet Thursday at Republican National Committee headquarters near Capitol Hill. GOP sources describe the meeting as an opportunity for the two men to get acquainted — they have only spoken in person only once before — and discuss ways to heal their fractured party.
No resolutions or commitments are expected as a result of their conversation, but both Trump and Ryan have said they are looking forward to the discussion and a chance to air their views with each other.
Trump is scheduled meet with other GOP leaders in the House and Senate during his visit. Among them: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California; House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana; his deputy whip, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina; House Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his leadership team.
“I look very much forward to meeting w/Paul Ryan & the GOP Party Leadership on Thurs in DC. Together, we will beat the Dems at all levels!” Trump said Tuesday in a post on Twitter.
Anytime a political party goes through a competitive, divisive primary campaign, it takes time for bruised egos and hurt feelings to subside and unity to occur. Given the stakes of a presidential race, that’s what usually happens. For the Republicans, 2016 could be different.
The party is especially split along ideological lines and on moral grounds, heading into the general election. Trump’s opponents take issue both with his behavior and temperament, and his agenda.
Traditional, conservative Republicans support reducing the size and scope of government domestically and a robust U.S. foreign policy abroad. Trump is a big government populist whose chief criticism of the Washington is that it’s plagued by bad management; internationally, the quasi-isolationist envisions the U.S. having less of role in world affairs than even President Obama.
Bridging this gap could prove difficult. On Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican Trump defeated in the primary, said he had no plans to campaign for the presumptive nominee because of their philosophical differences, let alone accept any invitation to serve as his running mate.
“He will be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign,” Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
As a political matter, veteran Republican strategists say Trump needs a unified party to win in November.
The Electoral College map naturally favors the Democrats, leaving any Republican nominee less room for error. Even if Trump attracts more Democrats to vote for him over Clinton than has been the case for Republican nominees in the recent past, it wouldn’t matter if the GOP was divided.
If that’s the case, all Trump would be doing is replacing lost Republican votes with Democrats.
In an auto-dial poll conducted in the past few days by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, Trump garnered the support of 82 percent of self-identified Republicans in a tested matchup with Clinton, with 11 percent unsure. Clinton was backed by 84 percent of Democrats, with 7 percent unsure.
In a CNN survey from late April and early May conducted by live operators, Trump was supported by just 73 percent of self-identified Republicans, compared to the 89 percent support Clinton received from Democrats. The error margin was 3 percentage points.
“The math is really difficult for him without a unified party. Mitt Romney won 93 percent of Republicans in 2012, while winning Independents, and it still wasn’t enough,” a Republican consultant said.
