Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), long a critic of his party’s presidential nominee, has ramped up his criticism, calling Donald Trump’s recent clutch of lewd remarks “indefensible,” and urging his party to make “protecting our congressional majorities” a priority.
However, Dent seems to be under the impression that it is not, currently, the second week of October 2016. In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” the Pennsylvania Republican vainly suggested people who could replace Trump as the GOP nominee:
DENT: The issue for us is how do we get our house in order. We only have 30 days left. You know, we can talk about other candidates, people like [former Secretary of Defense] Bob Gates, [former Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice, [Ohio Governor John] Kasich, who I strongly supported for president, did I mention ... Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University and former governor [of Indiana], all impeccable people who could actually win this race in 30 days.
What Dent doesn’t seem to understand is that the die is cast ― the 2016 presidential election is already underway and Trump’s name is affixed to the ballot. “More than 34,000 Republican voters have already cast their ballots for the 2016 general election according to the U.S. Election Project,” The Washington Post reported, “8,000 of them in the battleground state of North Carolina and another 5,000 in Florida.”
And while the Republican Party could change the rules that currently govern how a presidential nominee can be jettisoned from the ticket, doing so would require time that the GOP no longer has. As Frontloading HQ’s Josh Putnam ― the go-to expert on the GOP’s election rules ― explains:
Sorry to Gates, Rice, Kasich and Daniels.
