Ben Carson Doubles Down on Threat to Leave Republican Party

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson said Sunday that talk of a contested convention to select the Republican nominee violates terms of neutrality agreements they made with party leaders not to mount third-party campaigns. With his call to ban Muslims from traveling to the US, among other controversies he has ignited, the front-runner threatens to inflict deep harm on the party’s chance of winning its first presidential election in 12 years – perhaps why it triggered such unusually broad condemnation from across a Republican Party often wary of calling him out.

Mordecae Lee, UWM Professor of Urban Planning, says all of this is less about Trump’s positions and more about Ribble’s reelection in a district around Green Bay, that’s not solidly Republican or a red district.

“I signed a pledge”, Graham said, referring to a pledge to back the eventual GOP nominee that all the candidates, including Trump, signed during the summer.

Trump, who’s leading nationally in polls for the nomination, has suggested he’d be willing to run as an independent if he feels he’s not being treated “fairly” by Republicans.

Making the situation even more problematic for the party, Ben Carson, one of Trump’s serious rivals in the Republican race, threatened to join Trump in leaving the party if there are signs that the nomination process is being manipulated, USA Today reported.

A crowded Republican field for 2016, starting with more than a dozen hopefuls, has meant Trump, along with Carson, U.S. Sen.

Launching an independent campaign for president isn’t as simple as holding a press conference and coming up with a catchy name for your new political party – something like, the Make America Great Party. The bulk of states have an August or September deadline, with various signature requirements or filing fines.

In Texas, independent candidates must gather signatures from 79,939 registered voters by May 9.

This Republican presidential primary is so much fun (when it’s not incredibly depressing on policy and moral grounds).

“Our ballot access laws are a mess”, Winger said. “Well, I don’t want them to vote against me because Donald Trump is the nominee of my party, ‘” Lee said. We need to get away from that. Carly Fiorina says if Trump and his Muslim hate are in the still around in the general election, Hillary Clinton will “wipe the floor with him”. And Carson probably could, too. If that means blowing up the party, they will blow up the party.

“The infrastructure of American politics is so tied to the two-party system that it is hard to overcome that”, Stone said. As he continued his run, many people still saw Trump as an attention-seeker but he also amassed a growing number of supporters, forcing even his critics to take the campaign seriously.

Three party officials said Priebus was asked if the party was prepared for a brokered convention, and Priebus said he was. When one of the presidential candidates says something controversial, it gets downloaded into hyperspace and shared millions of times nearly instantaneously.