Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus isn’t sounding any alarm bells yet, despite the ongoing raucous Republican primary fight among a fractured field of candidates.
“This will be just fine, and we will move on,” Priebus told NPR’s Robert Siegel in an interview aired on Wednesday. “We’ll get to a nominee, we’ll go to the convention and we’ll be unified and we’ll beat the Democrats.”
“As the ball gets rolling downhill in these states, it has a way of ending some of these food fights that you’re seeing across the country,” the RNC chairman said, aiming to tamp down concerns about the consequences of the escalating battle for the GOP nomination.
Priebus also said he would not intervene in the conflict between GOP front-runner Donald Trump and rival Ted Cruz over pro-Cruz ads Trump has accused of being defamatory. Trump sent Cruz a cease-and-desist letter over the ads, which Cruz responded by holding a press conference and saying, “If you want to file a lawsuit challenging this ad, claiming defamation, file the lawsuit.”
Priebus said the RNC will stay out of the spat.
“We’re not going to get involved in commenting and quarterbacking analysis of campaign advertisements,” he said.
And the RNC chairman dismissed the suggestion that the GOP risked alienating crucial Latino voters as a result of the strong anti-immigration rhetoric roiling the nominating contest.
“I don’t think our effort is dead at all,” Priebus said. “These candidates will talk to those communities, will answer questions, will have plenty of time to campaign and obviously tell them why they’d be a better choice than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.”
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