Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus attempted to reassure Republicans wary of supporting Donald Trump today, telling conservative radio host Mike Gallagher that Trump is “not wanting to rewrite” the party’s platform and that the election comes down to “a conservative Supreme Court for generations.”
“Number one, Donald Trump is not wanting to rewrite the platform, okay?” he said. “He’s just not. So all that anxiety, just take it off the table. Not willing to do that. But, you know, get into that, tell people that, that you don’t want to rewrite, you like, you appreciate and agree with the platform the way it is.” (Trump has explicitly said that he would want to change the Republican platform on abortion.)
“Second thing is,” he said, “I think that they ought to release however many names — five, 10 names — people that would make great Supreme Court justices, from which you’re willing to choose a justice from. You know, something that the Federalist Society and the Heritage folks — you know, solid names that we can say, okay, this is what this is about. This is what this is about. It’s about a conservative Supreme Court for generations.”
Trump has promised to release a list created with the help of the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society from which he will pick Supreme Court justices, but has yet to do so. Both organizations have been working to skew the courts far to the right. As Ed Kilgore wrote in New York magazine yesterday, “conservative fears about Trump’s lack of fidelity to their supreme value of limited government could lead to demands for truly radical Court nominees who embrace the idea that right-wing judicial activism is needed to restrain the executive and legislative branches alike.”
When Gallagher asked if he thought that Trump’s campaign would actually release this promised list, Priebus replied that he didn’t know “where that’s at,” but “I think they’re open to it.”
