Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee often contradicts what he says on an almost daily basis, but suffers no consequences for it from the Republican voters.
However, his flip flops and about faces are not going over so well with the Conservative establishment. Trump is on such shaky ground with many Republicans that he released a list of his possible Supreme Court nominations to send a signal that he's on their side, but he couldn't help himself and may have lost whatever excitement and good will he built up with movement conservatives.
During a round table discussion on Fox News Sunday, Heritage CEO, Michael Needham (who loves to say Democrat party a little too much) said at first Donald Trump excited the conservative base by releasing his Supreme Court nominee list, which the Heritage Foundation called "excellent," but then had conservatives scratching their heads, wondering if he's "a fraud."
Substitute host, John Roberts asked Needham if Trump had bent over backwards enough to placate conservatives on the issue of the Supreme Court, when he said, "I mean it really seems like he's got to go to great lengths to keep people with him."
The Heritage CEO responded by saying, initially the list was "phenomenal" but...
NEEDHAM: It was. And I think that was a great gesture. In some ways it's a microcosm of the Trump campaign. He puts out this list. It is a phenomenal list. Conservatives think, fantastic. Donald Trump is saying, where’s Hillary's list? Let’s talk about that. And then later that night he says, but maybe I’ll add to the list. And so kind of this great moment with Donald Trump and conservatives for some reason gets a question mark at the end.
And I think what that causes is some people say this was really shrewd, this is how you make deals, this is how you negotiate. And other people say, well, hold on, that's a little erratic. You know, what's going on there? Does he really mean it? Is this a fraud? And so I think the challenge for Trump is to find those issues, give conservatives confidence and then convince those people in the second who look at that question mark and theoretic (ph) behavior and say, we're going to make them comfortable, we’re going to make them come over and join the coalition.
Trump is much more than simply being erratic. Nobody can ever tell if he means anything he says, including movement conservatives. That's why the #NeverTrump movement on the Republican side won't die.
