"A third-party candidate is a pipe dream," said Republican
strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush's administration and strongly
opposes Trump. "What's going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to
win big. It won't be close."
Chagrined anti-Trump Republicans seek to recruit third-party candidate(Reuters)
Donald Trump's emergence as the last man standing in the Republican
presidential race has prompted his critics inside the party to
intensify their search for a candidate they could back as a serious
third-party alternative.
Political operatives are
courting donors, calling potential candidates and developing legal
contingency plans for overcoming onerous ballot qualification laws.
"This is as much as anything a battle for the future of American party politics," said Republican strategist Joel Searby,
who is working with conservative writer Bill Kristol, among others, on
an effort to identify a third-party candidate to run in the Nov. 8
presidential election.
A separate group, Conservatives Against Trump, which includes blogger Erick Erickson,
has been holding calls and meetings to discuss third-party candidates
as well as other options to stop the New York billionaire from winning
the White House.
The hurdles to a third-party
candidacy are immense. No independent candidate has ever won a
presidential election, although some have played spoilers. But the
efforts by the Republican groups underscore the unusual divisiveness of
Trump's candidacy within Republican ranks ahead of a likely general
election fight with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Trump's
opposition to free trade is at odds with the views of many Republicans,
especially in the party's business wing. Many of Trump's critics also
find his rhetoric offensive, including his call to temporarily bar
Muslims from entering the country and his comment describing Mexican
immigrants to the United States as rapists and drug dealers.
Some
Republicans say they worry that any third-party candidate would only
siphon votes away from Trump and help Clinton win the election.
Ralph
Nader's independent presidential run has been blamed by some Democrats
for the razor-thin defeat of Democratic nominee Al Gore in the 2000
election. Ross Perot's independent candidacy in 1992 was seen by some
Republicans as contributing to President George H.W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.
One
outcome, though rare, may be that no candidate crosses the necessary
threshold of 270 votes in the U.S. Electoral College. In that case, the
vote for the next president would pass to the U.S. House of
Representatives, currently controlled by Republicans.
Deborah
DeMoss Fonseca, who recruited donors for former Republican presidential
candidate Jeb Bush and is working with Conservatives Against Trump,
said her group was trying to find a candidate who would be high-profile
enough to compete with Trump and Clinton.
NO EASY TASK
But
finding a candidate of that caliber who would be willing to run is no
easy feat. Searby's group has reached out to former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general,
among others, but both declined after discussions.
Republican
U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has emerged as a favorite of the
Republicans seeking a third-party candidate. Kristol has had warm words
for him.
Sasse, a freshman lawmaker and former
Bush administration official, is a strong critic of Trump and has called
for an alternative candidate to him. But he says that person should be
someone other than him.
On Wednesday, the morning
after Trump emerged as the presumptive presidential nominee, phones at
the office of Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson were ringing off
the hook with calls from small-government Republicans who feel they
cannot get behind Trump.
But as a Libertarian,
Johnson holds views on some issues, such as the legalization of
marijuana, that are antithetical to the views of some Republicans.
In
March, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, said he
had considered jumping into the race as a third-party candidate but
opted against it, saying he feared it would only serve to help get Trump
elected.
One of the biggest hurdles to a third-party run is simply getting on the ballot in enough states to mount a viable campaign.
Texas
requires more than 79,000 signatures from voters who did not
participate in either primary. Its deadline is Monday. Among other
states, North Carolina's deadline is the end of May, and Illinois and
Florida in mid-July.
"A third-party candidate is a pipe dream," said Republican strategist Tony Fratto, who worked in Bush's administration and strongly opposes Trump. "What's going to happen is Hillary Clinton is going to win big. It won't be close."
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