GOP leaders looking to block Trump
Romney plans speech before Detroit debate
Donald Trump’s romp through seven Super Tuesday states gave fresh urgency Wednesday to efforts by the Republican Party’s strategists and donors to halt his race toward the presidential nomination.
The anti-tax group Club for Growth Action launched a $1.5 million ad in Florida, casting Trump as a lousy businessman who “hides behind bankruptcy laws to duck paying his bills.” The group’s leaders say they will likely withhold endorsements and fundraising help from any GOP congressional candidate who backs the brash real estate mogul.
Florida’s delegate-rich primary is March 15.
“Time is running out,” said Club for Growth spokesman Doug Sachtleben. “Trump could cost us a good shot at the White House, the Senate majority and ultimately the Supreme Court.”
The GOP’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, who has become an in- creasingly loud anti-Trump voice in recent days, plans to deliver a major address about the presidential contest Thursday, hours before Trump and three other Republican candidates are slated to take the debate stage in Detroit, NBC News and other news organizations reported Wednesday.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson announced Wednesday that he will not participate in the debate as he sees no “path forward” for his campaign.
A Trump nomination would be “a disaster” for Senate Republican candidates, said Rob Jesmer, a GOP strategist and former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “People are just waking up to that reality in the last few days.”
“His microphone is bigger than anyone’s in the whole country,” Jesmer said, and Senate candidates seeking to win over moderate voters in swing states would be forced to answer for Trump’s controversial statements and positions on issues such as deporting 11 million unauthorized immigrants from the country.
Fred Malek, finance chairman for the Republican Governors Association and a veteran party fundraiser, said a Trump nomination could imperil his party’s chances of picking up Democratic governors’ seats in Missouri, Montana, West Virginia, Vermont and New Hampshire, where the state’s Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan is giving up her post to run for the U.S. Senate.
Republican donors are “alarmed, disappointed and frustrated” by Trump’s rise, he said.
Trump campaign officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but this week, Trump has sought to cast himself as a unifying figure expanding the party’s base. About 8.5 million Republicans voted in the 11 Super Tuesday states this week, a big jump from the roughly 4.7 million who participated in GOP nominating contests in those states four years ago.
“Rome is burning,” Jesmer said. “I think Trump can be stopped, but with every passing day, that becomes more difficult.”