Free Republic

On Friday afternoon, at an exclusive Republican donor retreat here hosted by Mitt Romney, frustration boiled over. During an off-the-record question-and-answer session with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Meg Whitman, the billionaire Hewlett Packard chief executive officer, confronted the speaker over his endorsement of Trump. Whitman, a major GOP giver who ran for California governor in 2010, compared Trump to historical demagogues like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and wanted to know how the speaker could get behind him. At another discussion session during the day, which featured top Romney alumni Stuart Stevens and Matt Rhoades, Ana Navarro, a Republican contributor...

If you’re a conservative activist or major Republican donor, you have some interesting social options in front of you this month. Tea or cocktails? A small-government rally or a fundraiser for same-sex marriage? Pack yourself in with the grass roots at a mass meeting or rub shoulders with the legal elite in a posh drawing room? But more is at stake than options on a menu of social gatherings. With the same tension that has existed in past efforts by some GOP elites to play down social issues or envelop them in a “Big Tent” — but with far more...