Among those Washington Republicans who met with presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump Thursday was Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Priebus tweeted a message that his meeting with Trump, Paul Ryan, and other congressional leaders was “great” and a “very positive step toward party unity.”
“Unity” was the operative word on Capitol Hill, despite the apparent risk Trump’s nomination poses to endangered House and Senate candidates down the ballot. As RNC chair, Priebus has been leading the call for Republican unity, even before Trump secured enough delegates to all but ensure his nomination. “[We] all need to get behind the nominee,” he told the New York Times last month.
But in 2012, Priebus was singing a different tune about another Republican nominee for national office who had said problematic statements that threatened to doom other GOP candidates. Todd Akin, the Missouri congressman who won that state’s U.S. Senate primary (with the help of the Democratic incumbent who hoped to face him in the general), had become toxic to national Republicans after suggesting that women who become pregnant from rape were not “legitimately” raped. Republicans across the country asked Akin to step aside from his race for the good of the party and the country. Priebus was one of them.
“I’m involved because I’m worried about the future of this country,” the RNC chairman told two RedState.com writers in August 2012. “What I do love about some people in politics is that they’re in it for the cause. They really do believe that this is about liberty and freedom and the future of our country. And sometimes when that’s really where you’re at, and you have an opportunity to put someone else in place who has a better chance of winning than you do, well, then, you’re not always, you know, the person that has to be the guy.”
With just over two months before the 2012 elections, Priebus called on Akin to drop out.
“I think that it’s time for Mr. Akin to step aside and allow someone else that has a better chance of winning. That’s all this is about, putting your country first,” he said, adding that the RNC would not spend any money on the Missouri Senate race, even if Akin was tied with Democratic opponent Claire McCaskill. Watch the video below, via a Twitter user opposed to Trump.
In the newest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, senior writer Jonathan V. Last asks all the Republicans and conservatives who abandoned Akin and party unity what makes Trump any different:
Read the whole thing here.
