Should GOP back Trump or look for alternatives? Your Say

Letters to the editor:

If the Republican nominating process turns into a contested convention and Donald Trump is not picked to be the final presidential candidate, all hell will break loose (“Trump sees ‘easy’ path to nomination after meeting with key Republican lawmakers”).

For starters, the people who voted for Trump in the primaries may not vote in the general election, which would assure a victory for Hillary Clinton.

From that point on, the GOP would probably lose the majority in the Senate and House, giving Clinton a chance to do anything she wants to ruin our country.

To stop this from happening, every GOP state delegate sent to the nominating convention should sign a pledge to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in the primaries.

The candidate must be selected by the people, not a bunch of biased delegates of the so-called establishment Republican Party.

Don Calmus; Avondale, Ariz.

Is it so hard to realize that when Trump suggests that if he’s not the nominee there may be trouble and rioting at the GOP convention, that in reality he is inciting his followers to riot?

Jerry Schneider; Hillsboro, Ore.

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

The people are speaking, and they want Trump. This contested convention stuff is nonsense. Whoever wins the most delegates should win the nomination. Period.

— Thomas W Moody

You guys must really want Hillary Clinton to win. There is no way that Trump or Ted Cruz beats Clinton in a general election. Sorry, but there is no legal case against her, as much as I wish there were.

Trump and Cruz have zero appeal for mainstream Republicans or moderates.

— Scott Hardy

The strategy is to force a contested convention and advance to a second ballot in which delegates are free to select as they choose. The party elite are terrified that Trump will lose in a historic fashion and drag vulnerable Senate seats with him.

— Mark Swanson

So if you don’t like the rules of the contest, you should get to change them if they don’t benefit your candidate?

— Keith Ketcher

I hope it’s a contested convention! How much more problematic could that Republican Party of hate get? Can you say death of the Republican Party?

— James Smith

Trump is the fulfillment of a decades-long transformation of the Republican Party, from a business-oriented party with small-town, white Protestant values, into a party of racist war-mongers.

— Edward Ader

Cruz will win. He is not considered establishment so the majority of Trump supporters will get on board, and Cruz will bring everyone else together because he is not Trump. Cruz will work with the establishment because he is smart enough to know that he needs Congress to get anything done.

— Victor Hagler