Carson joins Trump in threatening to leave GOP

After a month of tumbling in the polls, Ben Carson took a page from Donald Trump’s playbook Friday by threatening to depart the Republican Party. “If he’s our nominee, I believe he loses, I believe Republicans lose the Senate, he sets the House at risk and sends the party into the wilderness for the following ten years”, said Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), a Jeb Bush backer who this week called for Trump to leave the race. Carson also stated that if the rumors of a brokered convention are true “I assure you Donald Trump won’t be the only one leaving the party”, Carson said in a statement.

Both Trump and Carson have pledged to support the Republican nominee for president, though Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul, has reserved the right to launch an independent bid if he feels he has been treated unfairly. In that free-for-all scenario, delegates committed to an individual candidate are “released” to support someone else, and campaigns must work – and negotiate – to earn them in successive rounds of balloting. Still, it wasn’t like this all the time, as the former neurosurgeon had led polls of Republican voters, but over the past weeks, his support weakened, due to his lack of preparation and not-the-best-answers when it came to foreign policy. The Speaker, the lawmaker said, raised eyebrows when he gave his “Confident America” speech at the ornate Library of Congress, where he vowed to lay out a bold, conservative GOP agenda in 2016. “I just wouldn’t want to be part of it”.

Rich Hein/AP Ben Carson said he’s willing to run as an independent if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination. The statement comes after The Washington Post published a report saying party bosses have already conspired to do so.

The chief strategist for the RNC, Sean Spicer, said the dinner reported on by the Washington Post was simply about process, and not about undercutting the leading GOP candidate, Trump. There was brief discussion of the logistical challenges of running a national convention without a presumptive nominee, the attendee said.

But he added: “I will not sit by and watch a theft”. However, several states have deadlines in March if the candidate forms a minor party, which can sometimes require fewer signatures to get on the ballot.

I am a Ted Cruz supporter, and not particularly fond of the Donald’s campaign, but if he is nominated I will get behind him, and provide my support in defeating Barack Obama’s third term, in Hillary Clinton. This would start a process where candidates will have to cut deals to sway delegates and as successive votes are made until a candidate has won a majority of ballots. Ben Carson has warned “if the victor isn’t our nominee, then we have a massive problem” and Trump is again warning he could make a third party run that would nearly surely mean a win for the Democratic candidate.