The GOP establishment isn’t ready to throw in the towel in its quest to defeat Donald Trump.
Big-money donors are meeting in secret to plot their last stand.
And Donald Trump was shocked to find out this Republican plan on challenging him in 2024.
GOP elites look at the polls in disbelief.
The first poll taken after the second GOP debate showed Donald Trump’s lead growing to 51 points despite the fact that Trump skipped the debate.
Post-debate poll: Trump Posts Biggest Lead Yet Over DeSantis
Trump 63% (+5)
DeSantis 12% (-3)
Ramaswamy 7% (-2)
Pence 5% (-1)
Haley 5% (-2)
Christie 3% (+1)
Scott 2% (=)
Hutchinson 1%
Burgum 1%[Change vs Sept. 24]
Morning Consult | 1,183 LV | 09/28https://t.co/fPgcvoN2Wl pic.twitter.com/oJk4ZA0Wli
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 29, 2023
At the outset of the primary, the GOP establishment thought it could reluctantly consolidate around Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
But DeSantis running as Trump-lite never caught fire with the voters and the donor class was never comfortable with DeSantis’s pro-life beliefs or willingness to take on woke corporations.
DeSantis flip-flopping on supporting spending for Joe Biden’s war in Ukraine and his inability to say the criminal charges against Donald Trump were a politically motivated sham left him without grassroots support.
By the middle of the summer DeSantis’s fundraising tanked and his poll numbers flatlined.
The establishment moved to kicking the tires on RINO former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley but her “surge” following the second debate put her at 10 percent in New Hampshire and 7 percent nationally.
Establishment RINOs needed a savior and the donor class believes that will now come in the form of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Youngkin became the first Republican to win the Virginia gubernatorial mansion since 2009 by peeling off suburban voters from the Democrat coalition.
Governor Youngkin’s platform of parents’ rights and calls to ban woke ideology from the classroom combined with his “dad working the grill at a BBQ” vibe proved politically potent as Youngkin boasts approval ratings of over 50 percent in blue Virginia.
Now the establishment sees Youngkin as its last hope to stop Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination.
CBS News’s Bob Costa reported GOP elites are hosting a retreat on October 17 to convince Youngkin to make a late entry in the Republican presidential primary.
“Some of the biggest Republican donors in the country will converge next month at the historic Cavalier Hotel in Virginia Beach for a two-day meeting to rally behind Gov. Glenn Youngkin. The closed gathering, named the ‘Red Vest Retreat’ after the fleece Youngkin wore during his 2021 campaign, will begin Oct. 17 and be focused, officially, on the Republican effort to win full control of the General Assembly in Virginia’s upcoming elections. But unofficially, several donors tell me, it will be an opportunity for them to try to push, if not shove, Youngkin into the Republican presidential race,” Costa reported.
Former Attorney General-turned-Trump critic Bill Barr all but said he and others would throw their financial and institutional support behind Youngkin if he gets in the race.
“I’m for whoever can beat Trump in the primary and, while I still think some of the current candidates can do this, I’d welcome Youngkin putting his oar in,” Barr told Costa. “If the governor indicated he’d do it, I believe he would draw serious support and be a strong candidate,” Barr said.
Ever since Donald Trump emerged as the GOP frontrunner in 2016, the establishment tried to cook up one scheme after another to stop him.
GOP elites want a nominee who supports amnesty, globalist trade deals and endless wars.
Trump ran against all three and seized control of the party.
And the latest harebrained scheme to wrest control of the GOP back from Trump and his supporters is to push Glenn Youngkin into the presidential race.
Youngkin said he won’t enter until after the Virginia statewide elections in November meaning he will have missed the filing deadlines in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina as well as several other states.
How Youngkin is supposed to defeat Trump when he can’t appear on the ballot until after Trump built up a significant delegate lead is unexplained.
But it shows how Donald Trump turned the GOP establishment’s brains to vapor if they think this is a viable plan.
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