Can Donald Trump be stopped? Will the GOP’s mega donors garner enough money and air time to end Trump’s appeal to evangelical and blue collar voters?  Donald Trump proved he could beat opponents as different as Kasich and Cruz in places as different as Mississippi and Michigan. But that hasn’t stop party leaders from raising money to try and stop Trump’s momentum.

 

The entire force of the Party was being marshalled to prevent a clear frontrunner from winning. No matter how you feel about Donald Trump, that would not be a good thing. I would say that trying to deny the nomination to the person who gets the most votes on the final convention ballot is not very democratic. It is, however, within the rules.

 

It’s quite possible that the Republican Party can prevent Donald Trump from clinching the nomination.  But can they run “Not Trump” as a candidate?  Running ‘Not McGovern’ didn’t work for the Democrats at their 1972 convention with their ABM (Anybody But McGovern movement).

 

As I dug deeper into the stories about a Stop Trump movement, I found a great deal of that talk was from editorials in the mainstream conservative media.  I’ve found little evidence of a coordinated, concerted, movement by Trump’s political rivals to stop him from getting the Republican nomination.

 

 

During a television interview, Ben Ginsburg, a prominent Republican Party lawyer and strategist, outlined what would have to be done within (at the time he was speaking) the week and a half before Super Tuesday, when a huge chunk of delegates will be chosen.

 

“So, if you were to devise a plan to stop a runaway nominee,” Ginsberg told MSNBC, “you would have to do a lot of state-by-state organizing [to] win the delegates at the convention.”  That, my friends, is a lot of organizing, requiring scores of millions of dollars, plus a command post to provide centralized direction and coordination.

 

Is it happening?  If a Stop Trump movement is underway, it is a weak, almost invisible, effort.  Some in the media made much about a meeting last weekend of high-ranking Republican Congressional officials, billionaires, and Tech Industry giants who met on an island resort in Georgia.

 

But, when I looked into details it boiled down to the fact that Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s key strategist, presented one talk (one of many on different subjects at the event) on how William McKinley won the Republican nomination in the 1896 election.  McKinley ran against “William Jennings Bryan, a populist and a bigot who riled up the masses by assailing coastal elites and bankers.”

 

Rove is the author of a new book entitled ” The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters”.

 

 

 

While I’m sure that Karl Rove had some very interesting points about the parallels between the 1896 election and today, insight without action accomplishes very little. A talk is not an organizing event. It was just one talk out of many conversations taking place all across the globe. The other talks had nothing to do with election organizing.  Apple President Tim Cook and Space X mogul Elton Musk, for instance, choose to attend a meeting on “Mars and sustainable energy.”

 

To be sure, the political PACs of Trump’s opponents have poured a truck load of billionaire chump change into negative ads against Trump.  But, there’s no evidence the PAC commercials were coordinated (which would be against the law as well), or that they even reached an alleged goal of spending $25 million dollars, according to Politico.

 

These PACs for various candidates and causes have been running ads against Trump for months now, an activity that is well within the law.  Trump complained to a Florida rally that the commercials were saying “horrible, horrible things” about him.  Well, it’s hard to shed a tear for a man who has set a Guinness-style record for horrible things said about opponents.

 

Mitt Romney’s efforts appear to be lone-wolf undertakings.  Some of his former officials and those who organized a SuperPac on his losing effort in 2012 is involved, of course, and he made some recorded messages for Kasich in Michigan, and for Rubio in Florida.  But, there is zero evidence the 2012 Republican nominee was being a point man for a coordinated effort by Republican establishment officials.

 

Finally, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with opponents wanting to stop Trump at the convention.  That, too, is within the rules.  The hands-down leading candidate going into the 1860 Republican Convention was William Seward of New York.  The underdog at the convention was Abraham Lincoln, who by the shrewd deal-making of his convention lieutenants, wrested the nomination from Seward.

 

It’s an altogether different matter, of course, if there is a widespread feeling in the Party that Trump is perverting its historic values.  Senator Lesley Graham says Republicans should have thrown Trump out of the Party months and months ago.  They could try that, or they could hold a separate nominating convention.

 

It’s up to the voters (and then the delegates), to decide if they want Trump, or if — after reflection and alliance-forging during the balloting— they want someone more closely aligned with the Party’s historical values.

 

The death of Nancy Reagan is a somber, reflective, backdrop to this messy, raucous, at times profane, struggle for the Republican Party’s soul.  Reagan’s children have made it clear that Ronald Reagan would adamantly oppose Donald Trump.  What happens next may be the death of the Party that Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan believed in and knew.