Republican donors must persuade failing candidates for the party’s presidential nomination to drop out of the race quickly in order to stop Donald Trump winning, Senator Mitt Romney has said.
Trump leads most Republican primary polling averages by 30 points or more, despite facing 71 criminal indictments, the prospect of more over his attempted election subversion, and deeply unfavorable ratings with American voters at large.
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Romney, a Utah senator who was governor of Massachusetts before becoming the Republican nominee in 2012, said: “Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen [13] Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president.
“That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr Trump has the nomination sewn up.
“For that to happen, Republican mega-donors and influencers – large and small – are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed.
“That decision day should be no later than, say, 26 February, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.”
In 2016, Trump succeeded Romney as the Republican nominee despite failing to attract 50% of the vote. His closest challenger in that 17-strong field was the Texas senator Ted Cruz. Now it is the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. But DeSantis is falling further behind while other candidates struggle to reach even 10% support.
Romney opposed Trump in 2016, then endured a very public humiliation as he sought to be made Trump’s secretary of state, then returned to the anti-Trump camp.
He was the only Republican senator to vote to convict in Trump’s first impeachment trial, over approaches to Ukraine for political dirt, and one of seven to deem Trump guilty in his second trial, for inciting the Capitol riot.
In the Journal, seeking to explain why candidates were often reluctant to drop out despite overwhelming odds, Romney quoted Jim Carrey’s character in the 90s comedy Dumb and Dumber: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
He also reached back into party history – and that of his family.
“Candidates themselves used to consolidate the field to achieve what they saw as a greater purpose,” the senator wrote.
“In 1968, potential candidates William Scranton, Charles H Percy, Mark Hatfield, John Chafee and Nelson Rockefeller rallied around my father, [the former Michigan governor] George W Romney, instead of seeking nomination themselves, because they believed he had the best shot of stopping Richard Nixon.
“When my dad’s campaign faltered, he and they swung to Rockefeller to carry their cause forward. They were unsuccessful but not because of blind political ambition or vanity. They put a common cause above personal incentives.”
That common cause, Romney said, should be finding “a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation”.
“Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After 26 February, they should start doing just that.”
