Romney leading group to draft candidate to stop Trump

Former US Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is leading a group of conservatives aiming to draft a third-party candidate to run in a bid to keep Donald Trump from the White House.

The group consists of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and blogger and radio host Erick Erickson as well as longtime GOP strategist Mike Murphy and others, the Washington Post reported.

After Trump won Indiana's primary early this month, his remaining challengers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich, both suspended their presidential bids, leaving the billionaire businessman on an uncontested path to the nomination.

Trump dismissed unity of the Republican Party as a prerequisite for winning the White House after several GOP figures, including Paul Ryan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, and George H. W. Bush, refused to endorse his candidacy.

Now, the “stop Trump” group plans to target several potential candidates, including Kasich and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse among others, but they still have to find a candidate willing to join the race at this late stage.

In order to register a candidate for the election, thousands of signatures would need to be collected, but deadlines for ballot access are looming in most of the US states.

In Texas, home to the second-largest trove of electoral college votes, the deadline has already passed. However, members of the "stop Trump" movement said they believe it is still possible to have a legal challenge to gain entrance on the Texas ballot.

But ballot access is not the only problem facing the group. They have a bigger challenge and that is to identify a willing candidate.

According to NBC News, Kasich has not made any decision about whether to endorse Trump, but a spokesman told the Washington Post that Kasich had flatly ruled out running as a third-party or independent candidate.

Sasse, a conservative first-term senator, has publicly said he would not support Trump. But he has so far batted away calls for him to enter the race.

With disapproval rating of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton hovering in the mid-50s and Trump's approaching 60 percent among general election voters, the group says there is a possibility for an independent candidate to win over voters who do not like either of their other options.

The group has reportedly contacted retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis. They also examined the feasibility of finding a candidate who could match Trump's resume, somebody like reality television host and billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team Mark Cuban.

However, all three have reportedly turned down the overtures.

US presidential elections are decided by the Electoral College, based on state-by-state results, and not through the national popular vote.

Opinions may change ahead of the November presidential election as American voters become inundated with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign advertising, highly publicized debates and a pair of party conventions.

Nearly half of people, 47 percent, said they were “scared” that Trump has become the presumptive GOP nominee, while 26 percent said they were “hopeful,” according to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll of voters released Tuesday.

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