I just finished reading Game of Thorns. It changed my mind about a Priebus. I had no idea how much he bucked the GOPe during and after the convention to help Trump.
Priebus moved heaven and earth to set up an effective presence in Florida, where the campaign had opened just one office.
He completely took over the ground game which didn’t exist and built one that worked against Hillary’s mega millions state of the art technological gee whiz system.
And he beat back all of the pressure from the establishment who wanted to dump Trump and run with Pence.
Prior to reading the book, I had no use for Priebus. I have to say, it changed my perceptions bigly.
I haven’t read it, or know much about it. For that reason I’ll ask you.
Who was it written by? Do you think there’s any chance it was written to white-wash Priebus? Was he in need of a new public image, a new persona, and was this the fix?
I’m not trying to give you a hard time. For all I know you are exactly right. I’m just raising the issue for you to think about the book, and ask yourself this question.
If you still think it’s a great book and Priebus is much better than I think, I’m not opposed to the opinion. It’s very hard for us to know exactly what is going on back there.
All I know is that the GOPe has not been our friend for a long long time. Priebus, McConnell, Paul Ryan, and others have been the figurehead of the GOPe. I railed against what they were up to many times over the years.
It’s hard for me to accept that these guys who seemed to betray our expectations, were really good guys after all.
Who was it then that was defeating us from our own side of the isle, if not for these folks.
Just food for thought.
I haven’t read the book, but I heard of how much Priebus and Sean Spicer at the RNC were doing for Trump while they were doing it. That’s why I didn’t really like hearing all the unqualified bad mouthing of Priebus during and after the election. I’m not totally sure that Trump would have gotten elected without them, as he made an agreement very early on in the general campaign that they would be responsible for almost his entire ground game (and he’d raise money for them in return).
Whenever I used to hear leftists mocking Trump for having no ground game, I used to think, “Boy, are they going to be in for a surprise.” And when I heard Republicans complain that the RNC wasn’t behind him because they weren’t spending money on ads for him, I likewise used to shake my head that they didn’t know the details about Trump’s public (but under-publicized) agreement with the RNC. It was Trump who made the decisions about advertising.
Priebus, who was determined to learn from what Obama did to win, spent four years making sure that the Republicans built up a data operation far beyond anything we’ve ever had before, and once Trump was the nominee he devoted much of that operation enthusiastically to trying to get Trump elected. Trump, of course, knew that, and it’s one of the reasons he was the only person Trump called up to the microphone during his victory speech and why he was rewarded with such a powerful job.
Of course, Priebus has some legitimate GOP establishment tarnish, so we do need to keep an eye on him I think, but I don’t doubt his loyalty to Trump.