Trump-buster role not proving to be popular

Ryan, Romney running scared

WASHINGTON: With US Republicans sharply split over a front- runner they cannot unite behind, a new group is trying to push the country’s top elected Republican, Paul Ryan, into the White House race.

The Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers as a Super PAC ( political action committee) with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, adding to the groups of mainstream Republican leaders and donors with a shared goal: stopping Trump.

Ryan, the House of Representatives speaker who spoke out against Trump for not quickly rejecting white supremacist support, did not appear ready to take on the role.

“He is flattered, but not interested,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email yesterday.

Politico first reported the formation of the draft-Ryan PAC.

Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ losing presidential candidate in 2012, also said he was not interested.

“There are no circumstances I can foresee where that would possibly happen,” Romney said on NBC’s Today show yesterday, a day after he excoriated Trump as a fraud illequipped for the White House.

The Republican Party may need more than a hero as it grapples with its deepest divisions in decades.

Those splits were on display again on Thursday night as Trump took on his two closest challengers, US senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, in a debate marked by the yelling, namecalling and vulgarity that has tainted the race.

Trump’s rivals said they would support the ultimate nominee but it was clear that would be easier said than done.

“That is the quandary I’m trying to avoid the Republican Party having to face,” Rubio said on CNN yesterday.

While the anti-Trump movements proliferated, some Republicans have urged party leaders to respect the will of the voters.

Trump spokesman Sam Clovis seized on that message yesterday, warning on CNN that it was dangerous for Republican leaders to “call American voters stupid” because they support Trump.

“You have record turnout in every state so far. Record turnout. That doesn’t happen by accident,” said Clovis.

Columnist Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter, had a different lament in the Wall Street Journal: “I think we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes.

“It is hard to believe what replaces it will be better. No one knows where this goes.” – Reuters