December 12, 2015

RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer did his best to put a happy face on how "awesome" it is that Donald Trump is their current front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and to downplay the recent uproar over the talk of a brokered convention.

Here's how Spicer responded when Michael Smerconish asked him about Trump doing damage to the GOP "brand" (as though the rest of the party hasn't done a good enough job of doing that already) during the general election on CNN this Saturday morning:

SMERCONISH: What kind of a year has it been for the RNC should it end with Donald Trump as your front-runner?

SPICER: As far as this year, it's been intense. It's been awesome. I think you look at the level of enthusiasm that's going out this country on the Republican side, it's unprecedented. We have the most diverse, qualified field in the history of either party and I think that's awesome for where as we head into the 2016.

SMERCONISH: Don't you worry about the brand though, where two-thirds of the country disagrees with Trump's pronouncement relative to Muslim immigration. You've got to be concerned about how that can sell in a general, right? Regardless of whether he's the nominee or someone else gets painted with that broad brush.

SPICER: Look, here's what I care about. Winning. That's it. Number one, number two, number three. I want to win. The chairman wants to win. Everyone in this building, all they care about is winning and what we are doing right now is beating Hillary Clinton up and down. You pick those candidates out, I'll pick any one of them that will be on either of those debate stages, and we will win.

Spicer went onto brag about some poll numbers showing all of the Republican candidates supposedly either beating Clinton or within the margin of error. Spicer didn't explain how any of them were supposed to win if they get something close to zero percent of the black and Hispanic vote in the general election.

Spicer also did his best to pretend that all the talk of a brokered convention is nothing new and likened it to them preparing for bad weather:

SMERCONISH: Dr. Carson was none too happy to hear about that Monday night dinner in Washington. What's your response to him?

SPICER: There's two different issues. One is what happened at that dinner, and that dinner was literally a group of folks getting together having a political discussion of which this was a subject that came up half way through a dinner, because people were trying to understand the process through a course of a normal conversation that occurs.

However, that being said I held a press briefing that a hundred and fifty members of the press came to three weeks ago, where we walked through the delegate nomination process and where people asked us about different rules and different procedures that are going to be different for this cycle and of course the conversation of does a contested primary, is that being covered. And the answer that I would say publicly, privately, in a phone booth, on a metro, is of course, we plan for every scenario.

Look, we're a party that's had the last two conventions, we've had a hurricane, so of course we plan for scenarios. What happens if weather's a problem? What happens if there's a transportation issue? What happens if there's a contested convention? We will prepare for every scenario. It would be malpractice for us not to do that, especially after the last two weather related conventions. So anyone who would tell you that we're not preparing for a variety of scenarios should have their head checked, but we're not doing it in any kind of closed door way.

Move along now folks. Nothing to see here.

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