Kendal Unruh, a Colorado delegate who is leading the campaign, told the Washington Post that the effort is “literally is an “Anybody but Trump” movement”. The group, Unruh says, marks the coalescing of disparate “pockets of resistance” – including backers of Sen. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former GOP candidate for president, said he’s still not ready to endorse Trump. Ted Cruz of Texas in the primary, but say they have no specific candidate in mind and are not taking cues from any of Trump’s vanquished opponents.
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“If we had people, where the bullets were going in the opposite direction, right smack between the eyes of this maniac”, Trump said, gesturing between his eyes.
In a statement Friday, Trump dismissed the plots against him.
The delegates are angered by Trump’s recent comments on gun control, his racial attacks on a federal judge and his sinking poll numbers.
“I won nearly 14 million votes, which is by far more votes than any candidate in the history of the Republican primaries”.
He added, “People that I defeated soundly in the primaries will do anything to get a second shot – but there is no mechanism for it to happen”.
Which means the real question for party actors is whether current Republican voters who now support Trump would move on to any candidate who emerged from a convention with consensus (apart from Trump himself) support from the party, including party-aligned media. “It is nothing more than a media creation and a series of tweets”.
Asked what line Trump must traverse before imperiling his own nomination, Trump detractor Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., said, “I don’t know, because I think he’s crossed it 20 times already”. “This has never been done before, so there’s no textbook on how to do it”.
To prevail, Unruh needs a majority of the 112 members of the convention rules committee, which has two delegates from each state and territory.
Bill Kristol, longtime foe of Trump and editor of The Weekly Standard, is urging the party to “cut the thread” with the still-presumptive nominee. But his use of the word “conscience” could prove helpful to delegates organizing the anti-Trump campaign because they are pushing to pass a “conscience clause” that would unbind delegates and allow them to vote for whomever they want. Only time will tell if they succeed.
Unruh has moved out in front publicly on the issue, but top-level donors and operatives have been re-examining their options for removing Trump behind the scenes as well.
The fresh wave of anti-Trump organizing comes as a growing number of Republicans have signaled that they will not support Trump for president.
“They can make everything look tumultuous”, Cindy Costa, South Carolina’s RNC committeewoman, said of those attempting to let delegates vote freely.
Trump opponents have been getting some high-profile cover as well.
House Speaker Paul Ryan says Republican lawmakers should follow their conscience in deciding whether or not to support Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive nominee for president. “Of course I wouldn’t do that”, the Republicans’ most senior elected official said in excerpts released on Friday of an NBC interview set to air on Sunday.
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As confusion continued to swirl about the pending nomination of Trump, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced Friday the selection of four party loyalists who will fill vital posts in the convention in Cleveland. And he also tapped former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour – a trusted power player among establishment Republicans – to lead the convention’s Committee on Permanent Organization with Wisconsin RNC Committeewoman Mary Buestrin.
