Romney urges supporters to narrow GOP field

PARK CITY, Utah — Alarmed by the dominance of Donald Trump less than 100 days before the Iowa caucuses, Senator Mitt Romney. republican of Utah, urged an influential group of his onetime campaign donors to help narrow the GOP field to one viable challenger who can face off against the former president for the nomination.

Romney, one of the most outspoken Republican critics of Trump, addressed his longtime financial backers at a gathering in Park City less than a month after announcing that he will not run for reelection next year. Free from those constraints, he did not mince words when describing the dysfunction in his party just days after Representative Kevin McCarthy of California was ousted as House speaker by a faction of far-right Republicans led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump acolyte.

“I think our party has multiple personality disorder, and I think the Democratic Party does as well,” the 2012 Republican presidential nominee said Tuesday during a fireside chat with his former running mate, Paul D. Ryan. “We don’t know what we are or what we stand for within our party.”

The policy gathering, known as the E2 Summit — so named for “experts and enthusiasts” — was launched by Romney a decade ago, before he became a US senator, and has been helmed by Ryan since 2019.

In a wide-ranging discussion that touched on what the US role should be in the conflict between Hamas and Israel, as well as the threats to the United States posed by China, Russia, and Iran, both Romney and Ryan expressed concern about the GOP’s ability to grapple with those complex issues.

Romney said he told Ryan that he had no clear answer when Ryan asked him what the conservative movement would look like after Trump. Ryan touched on his own concern that the party is now driven by “populism untethered to principles” and more frequently tethered to “the cult of Donald Trump’s personality.”

The former House speaker defined the Republican Party’s problem as such: “A guy, he’s 77 years old — and he’s got like 91 counts, and he’s got a shelf life. . . . Hopefully it’s February, but maybe it’s a little longer,” Ryan said, alluding to the dozens of criminal charges Trump faces in multiple trials next year.

Earlier in the day, the group heard from four of the contenders vying for the Republican presidential nomination — Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum — in sessions that were closed to the press. Ryan on Tuesday night asked Romney to pinpoint how soon donors would have to coalesce around one candidate — essentially forcing lower-tier candidates from the race — to avoid the “train wreck coming” that would be Trump clinching the GOP nomination.

With Trump maintaining a wide lead in polls of the GOP race, Romney acknowledged that a “train wreck is the most likely scenario, but not necessary.”