(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 Republican officials and leading figures in the party’s establishment are preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as businessman Donald Trump continues to sit atop the polls in the GOP presidential race. More than 20 of them convened Monday near the Capitol for a dinner held by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and the prospect of Trump nearing next year’s nominating convention in Cleveland with a significant number of delegates dominated the discussion, according to five people familiar with the meeting. Condemnation came quickly after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. [Attacks on Trump just make these voters like him more] 
 
 When asked Thursday about the dinner and convention planning, Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist and spokesman, said: “The RNC is neutral in this process, and the rules are set until the convention begins next July. Our goal is to ensure a successful nomination, and that requires us thinking through every scenario, including a contested convention.” 
 
 During the dinner, attendees delved into what exactly a brokered convention would look like. Three party officials said Priebus was asked at the dinner if the party was prepared for a brokered convention, and Priebus said he was.
– Republican strategists who had spoken of a smooth nomination process just a few months ago are now braced for a battle royal at the Quicken Loans Arena. Insiders tell the Washington Post that GOP bigwigs gathered Monday and discussed the possibility of a brokered convention in Cleveland in July. The party hasn't entered a convention without a clear nominee since 1976, when Gerald Ford narrowly defeated conservative insurgent Ronald Reagan on the first ballot. The Post's sources say the GOP leaders discussed strategies in case there is no clear nominee this time around and no winner on the first ballot, allowing delegates to shift allegiances in what Reuters reports would be the first brokered GOP convention since Thomas Dewey was nominated in 1948. A source tells the Post that some GOP strategists argued for a strategy to make sure there was a clear alternative to Donald Trump in the event of a brokered convention, though another official present at the meeting tells Reuters that Trump wasn't the focus of the discussion. "It was more logistical in nature, not strategic," he says. "It was more like 'are you planning for a hurricane?'" A former Mitt Romney adviser agrees that with the field still crowded, talk of a brokered convention goes beyond Trump. "What you're seeing is the party bracing for a potential Hunger Games scenario where you have a different person win each of the first four primaries and they all have the resources to slug it out until the convention," he tells the Post.