By Karen Tumulty, Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, July 8 , 2015

The head of the Republican National Committee, responding to demands from increasingly worried party leaders, spent nearly an hour Wednesday on the phone with Donald Trump, urging the presidential candidate to tone down his inflammatory comments about immigration that have infuriated a key election constituency.

The call from Chairman Reince Priebus, described by donors and consultants briefed on the conversation and confirmed by the RNC, underscores the extent to which Trump has gone from an embarrassment to a cause for serious alarm among top Republicans in Washington and nationwide.

But there is little they can do about the mogul and reality-television star, who draws sustenance from controversy and attention. And some fear that, with assistance from Democrats, Trump could become the face of the GOP.

Rather than backing down from his comments about illegal immigrants — whom he characterized as rapists and killers, among other things — Trump has amplified his remarks at every opportunity, including in a round of interviews Wednesday.

He insisted to NBC News that he has “nothing to apologize for” in his repeated remarks about Mexicans. But he also predicted that, if he secures the GOP nomination, “I’ll win the Latino vote.”

Few seem to think he has a chance of becoming his party’s 2016 standard-bearer, even though he is running near the front of the pack in some early primary states. Summer poll numbers for novelty candidates such as Trump tend to be as perishable as ice cream cones.

“I think he’ll self-destruct relatively quickly. The dynamic, I think, will change very dramatically, and Trump will be yesterday’s news,” said former senator Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah). “But if this does have legs, if Trump can keep this going, it will be very worrisome.”

The fear expressed by Bennett and others is that Trump will set back the party’s efforts to rehabilitate its image and broaden its reach. And it appears likely that he will be onstage in the presidential debates that begin next month — a dissonant figure in what GOP leaders had hoped to present as a substantive, experienced and appealing field of candidates.

for more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/t...ry.html?hpid=z1

making progress with Latinos????

that's a joke!

the harm these power broking idiots fear is that the control they exert over their candidates will slip away......

"Priebus’s decision to reach out to Trump came after days of talks with Republican donors and officials about how best to manage Trump’s outsize presence on the airwaves. Many financiers who are influential at the RNC have been fuming about Trump’s ascent and told Priebus that he must ensure that the RNC’s efforts over the past year to win more of the Hispanic vote is not harmed."

Houston we have a problem.
We have a straight shooter who isn't being controlled by us and we must silence him because the American people are starting to like what they hear and that is DANGEROUS!!!

the hand wringing by the Republican PTB is disgusting.

EXCLUSIVE: 'My son was murdered by a Mexican illegal immigrant, just like Kathryn Steinle - it's time people listened to Trump,' says mother of gunned-down teenage football star

"The mother of a teenage boy gunned down by an illegal Mexican immigrant in strikingly similar circumstances to how Kathryn Steinle died, has backed Presidential hopeful Donald Trump to 'close our borders'.
Anita Shaw, whose 17-year-old boy Jamiel Jr was murdered by gang member Pedro Espinoza in Los Angeles in 2008, says she is 'angry' at the current immigration policy.
She told Daily Mail Online: 'It makes me sad, it makes me angry, it makes me frustrated.
'It's amazing to me that the same incident is still going on today. It's like, when will the public wake up and do something.
'And this guy who is running for President, Donald Trump, he's trying to do something and they're trying to shut him down."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...l#ixzz3fOWOlCux