The #NeverTrump group has a one major, underlying problem that is preventing an easy path to stopping the clownish mogul from taking over the party: they don't have a strong leader within the party who can resist him.
The plan was to anoint Jeb Bush as the heir to the throne and he raised 157.6 million dollars for his campaign while his Super-PACs (allegedly independently run adjuncts) raised another 124 million dollars.
The thinking was to get someone who could win Florida, unite the Bush coalition of evangelicals, neocons, and middle class families, and expand the party's brand to include the growing numbers of Latinos in the country. Trump illustrated that this was a failed strategy in part because much of the GOP base is decidedly uninterested in expanding the party's concerns and values to include those of hispanics and in part because Jeb is not the strong leader his brother was.
All that money and power tried to force Jeb down the throats of the Republican electorate for months, and all the way through the South Carolina primary, before giving up and rallying behind Marco Rubio. But now they have a couple of new problems.
First, Trump has built a ton of momentum and stopping him from winning the nomination would be a difficult task for most opposing candidates. The bigger problem though is a lack of a clear alternative. They were all in on Jeb being the strong leader who could unite the party and now Rubio is trying to become that guy in his stead immediately after enduring tens of millions of dollars worth of negative ads from the Jeb campaign.
The ideal Trump alternative would be a candidate with a record of being open to some kind of amnesty-like program but firm on the need for strong borders. He'd be able to present a general case for bringing a firm hand on law and order issues within the US, in terms of either crime or terrorism, without coming across as a hawk on foreign policy. He'd be socially conservative but not aggressively so on losing issues like gay marriage. Finally, he'd have what every candidate needs to have, which is a trustworthy demeanor and personality.
This leads us to Trump's biggest problem both in securing the nomination and in winning the general election, having a trustworthy demeanor and personality.
The biggest success Trump has had so far has been creating a new coalition out of voters who both the GOP and DNC had passed over, working and lower class white Americans who have struggled to build middle class lives in the modern era yet feel that the Democrats are only out for minorities or LGBT folk and the Republicans are just looking out for the rich.
Donald's inevitable general election pivot would be towards a moderately socialist domestic platform that emphasizes looking out for America's poor and disenfranchised while looking to unite everyone with a "us for them" message of focusing on Americans rather than immigrants or foreign issues.
Here's the problem, his current coalition is still averaging at about 35% in the GOP primary elections and he's struggling to earn the trust of suburban and safely middle class families who aren't feeling the pinch in the modern economy badly enough to trust a fascist-backed demagogue with the most powerful office in the world. What's more, there's good reason to believe that they will take the out if offered an alternative option either in the primary, at the convention, or in the general election.
Everyone has spent so long worrying about what Trump might do as a 3rd party candidate like Ross Perot that no one has considered the possibility that Trump himself could be taken down by a third party candidate such as Mitt Romney.
If you don't think Romney is setting himself up to be either a convention or general election alternative to Trump then tell me why he's assuming the role of anti-Trump right now and taking all these swings at him.
There would be plenty of socially conservative, middle class voters in key states like Texas or swing states like Florida, who would take the "vote for Mitt and hope to deny either party enough electoral votes to win the election" option and keep their conscience clean of either electing a detestable liberal like Hillary Clinton or a charlatan like Donald Trump. It may not get poor Mitt into office but it could very well sink Trump.
Donald can't get into general office without support from the middle class, so how does he get it?
It's really too late to make any big waves or moves in his messaging and his frequent remarks about Planned Parenthood being great for women's health indicates that he doesn't plan on tailoring his message to the concerns of middle class families any time soon. Even if he did it would be hard to convince him over the next few months that he's a serious candidate that respectable, college-educated people vote for after his news-catching, vulgar comments over the last year.
What's more likely is that he tries to find a VP that can bring this strong base of the Republican party into his coalition and convince them to trust him. The fact that Hillary is his rival should help.
If someone like Romney is on the ballot though would it be enough? I suspect not. Crazy times we live in.
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