Sununu: Trump can win if voters don’t ‘wake up’

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R) said Monday that GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump can “win anywhere if the electorate doesn’t wake up.”  

{mosads}Sununu, who served as the first White House chief of staff for former President George H. W. Bush, argued on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that Trump will likely disappoint supporters before 2016.

“If Republicans go on to nominate someone that can govern the country in a way they want and make the policies they want, they ought to pay attention to the issues that the candidates support,” he said.

“Trump is in favor of single-payer healthcare,” Sununu said.  “That’s absolutely something Republicans hate.”

“Trump likes eminent domain,” he continued.  “Most conservative Republicans can’t stand that.”

“So they are going to have to start looking at the issues so that they don’t get frustrated by the results of winning, perhaps, and getting somebody who is just as bad as [President] Obama on the issues they care about,” he added.

Sununu also charged that the GOP’s 2016 field is still wrestling with how to handle Trump’s media dominance.

“This has been a very different campaign than most people anticipated, primarily because the media has chosen to cover the entertainment side,” he said.

“The other candidates are now finding that in order to fight that, they’re going to have to spend more money on television than they anticipated and I think Jeb Bush is cutting back on personnel in order to make more money available for TV ads,” added Sununu.

Jeb Bush has repeatedly battled for attention this year despite Trump’s bombastic campaign rhetoric, arguing last weekend that the New York business mogul is incapable of overcoming Washington’s gridlock should take the Oval Office next year.

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done…then I don’t want no part of it,” said Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida.

“I’ve got a lot of really cool things I can do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them,” he said.  “That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

Sununu proposed Monday that Jeb Bush is merely letting off steam as his campaign experiences growing pains.

“Look, the message was right, the tone was not,” he said of Jeb Bush’s remarks.  “I think Jeb Bush is just making a midcourse correction.”

“I think it’s possible for any of the serious Republican candidates to come in and win this thing,” Sununu added.