Republican Leaders Map a Strategy to Derail Donald Trump

Republican Leaders Map a Strategy to Derail Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump speaking at an election night news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday, when he won four primaries.

Donald J. Trump speaking at an election night news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Tuesday, when he won four primaries. Photo credit: Eric Thayer for The New York Times

By Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin

March 19, 2016

Excerpts

Republican leaders adamantly opposed to Donald J. Trump’s candidacy are preparing a 100-day campaign to deny him the presidential nomination, starting with an aggressive battle in Wisconsin’s April 5 primary and extending into the summer, with a delegate-by-delegate lobbying effort that would cast Mr. Trump as a calamitous choice for the general election.

Recognizing that Mr. Trump has seized a formidable advantage in the race, they say that an effort to block him would rely on an array of desperation measures, the political equivalent of guerrilla fighting.

There is no longer room for error or delay, the anti-Trump forces say, and without a flawlessly executed plan of attack, he could well become unstoppable.

But should that effort falter, leading conservatives are prepared to field an independent candidate in the general election, to defend Republican principles and offer traditional conservatives an alternative to Mr. Trump’s hard-edged populism. They described their plans in interviews after Mr. Trump’s victories last Tuesday in Florida and three other states. …

William Kristol [link added], editor of The Weekly Standard, has circulated a memo to a small number of conservative allies detailing the process by which an independent candidate could get on general-election ballots across the country.

Among the recruits under discussion are Tom Coburn, a former Oklahoma senator who has told associates that he would be open to running, and Rick Perry[link added], the former Texas governor who was suggested as a possible third-party candidate at a meeting of conservative activists on Thursday in Washington. …

Trump opponents convened a series of war councils last week to pinpoint his biggest vulnerabilities and consider whether to endorse one of his two remaining opponents, Senator Ted Cruz [link added] of Texas and Gov. John Kasich [link added] of Ohio. …

For Republicans opposed to Mr. Trump under any circumstances, a third-party campaign offers a last refuge. Such a candidacy might gain support from high levels of the party: [Mitt] Romney [link added] has said he would be inclined to vote for a third candidate over Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton. …

[Bill] Kristol [link added], a leading critic of Mr. Trump, said in an interview that he believed it was not too late to put forward a viable independent candidacy. “I think the ballot access question is manageable,” he said. “The big question is, who’s the candidate?” …

A version of this article appears in print on March 20, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Facing Long Odds, G.O.P. Leaders Map Strategy to Derail Trump.

Read the full report at the New York Times