RNC Chief Reince Priebus Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Trump

Embrace the chaos, Reince.

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Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as we know, is what Woody Guthrie would have come up with, had he composed "Derportees."

Competition for this week's House Cup was thinner than usual, owing to the fact that the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker, was closed because there were European Foot Hockey games being thrown across every platform of the NBC family of networks. Consequently, for this week, we are going to declare a tie between This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs and Face The Nation on CBS, where John Dickerson has grown quite comfortable in the chair once occupied by former Bulgar Empire pollster Bob Schieffer. This is because both of them saw fit to host obvious anagram Reince Priebus, the emptiest suit in American politics. These days, of course, Priebus's primary job is to defend the vulgar talking yam who is his party's presumptive presidential nominee without looking as though Corey Lewandowski is off-camera holding his balls in red-hot clamps. The effort is clearly wearing on the poor lad.

On ABC, Priebus even was gifted with conservative mole Jonathan Karl as his interlocutor. This is probably the only thing that allowed Priebus to say the first honest thing he's said in months.

KARL: OK, but let me ask you the big question—who is the leader of the Republican Party right now? Who speaks for the party?

PRIEBUS: You know what? That's a—people ask that question all the time. I mean I speak for the Republican National Committee. Paul speaks for House Republicans. Donald Trump speaks for the millions and millions of people out there that have broken records that were voting. I think a lot of people speak for our party, because it's a huge party. And there's only two parties in this country. I mean, this isn't Italy. We don't have 12 parties where everyone can fit neatly into a box. And so that's why I would say in order for us to be successful, we have to be the party of the open door to recognize that, you know, differences among each other doesn't mean that we ask people to leave. It means that we ask people in and that we keep growing. And so a lot of people speak for our party.

And many of them are crazy as hell. And one of them, the guy with the presidential nomination in hand, is the human equivalent of a wolverine in a meat locker.

PRIEBUS: Well, look, first of all, I'm not—I believe that the American people look at someone like Donald Trump and say, OK, here's a guy on the outside. Here's a guy that's never run for office. And I just have to tell you, after a year of dealing with this primary, one on one—and you know it's been a lot—I don't think the traditional playbook applies, Jon. We've been down this road for a year. And it doesn't apply. He's rewritten the playbook.

Translation From The Original Weaselspeak: I'm just hoping they don't turn me into The Wicker Man in Cleveland.

On CBS, Priebus ran a lot of the same riffs he used on Karl, and to no greater effect, either.

PRIEBUS: And so I think we're going to get there. I think there's plenty of common ground. And when the choice is Hillary Clinton, someone who has made a career of lying and skirting the issues, and you look at the e-mails, the Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, and a guy who has never run for office and might have some stories out there that may make some interesting news, I think, in the end, people are going to choose the person that is going to cause an earthquake in Washington and get something done over Hillary Clinton.

Speaking of earthquakes, this is the image of a man with the ground opening up under his feet and clinging to a tuft of grass at the edge of the abyss. Just let go, Reince. It will be over in a second. Besides, later in the show, Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Zygote) showed that she's perfectly willing to go base-jumping right into the open, depthless crevasse.

BLACKBURN: I think you're going to see Paul Ryan move very quickly toward working with Donald Trump and unifying the Republican Party. And, quite frankly, John, I think we're going to have the most dynamic campaign this fall that we have had in decades. You have millions of new voters that have come to the Republican Party. You have people who are saying, let's build a bigger tent, let's bring people in, let's address these problems. As Peter said, national security, Chris said, jobs and economic security, and I will add third one, retirement security. Those are the three top issues that we're hearing about. It doesn't matter if it's male or female. What they know is Hillary Clinton is a lying, cheating, stealing-type woman. And what they have got in Donald Trump is a can-do man who says, we're going to get in behind and fix it. Don't know exactly how, but let's be a great team and let's get it done. That's what they want.

Embrace the chaos, Reince. Take the leap. It's not like you have any choice.


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