OPINION:
Mitt Romney designated himself as the conscience of the Republican Party, with a duty to destroy the man he calls a fraud. Hyperbole is a staple of political campaigns and the wise voter knows better than to give it full credit. But Mr. Romney, eloquent and well-meaning as he may be, is the wrong man for the job of cutting Donald Trump down to size. The way he’s trying to do it demonstrates that he has neither an understanding of the Trump phenomenon nor the damage he’s inflicting on the party’s November prospects.
The only man with a remaining chance to wrest the Republican nomination from Mr. Trump is Ted Cruz, who is an outsider, too, frantically making the case that the Donald is neither conservative nor electable. The hope of Mr. Romney and the Republican establishment is that Marco Rubio will win Florida and John Kasich will take Ohio, and deny Mr. Trump the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the nomination on the first ballot in Cleveland. If that happens, an entirely new game will be set afoot. The choice of a nominee could be referred to a smoke-filled room somewhere in Cleveland.
That sounds like a plan, but it’s too cynical by half. To be sure, it’s the way nominees were chosen in the past, and some of the presidents who emerged from the stale air and cigar smoke turned out to be good enough. Harry S. Truman comes to mind. The scheme requires Mr. Rubio and John Kasich to stay in the race, not because they can win, but because they, along with Mr. Cruz, might stall the Trump train and a brokered convention would turn to someone else. It’s a perfectly legitimate strategy, but running an establishment jihad against one man is not likely to end well.
Even if it works — and it’s a very long shot — the schemers are not likely to turn the party over to Ted Cruz. The elites dislike him even more fiercely than they dislike Donald Trump. The idea is that with the Donald at the top of the ticket the party will be deprived of the White House, lose the Senate, their big majority in the House and dozens of down-ballot races in a wipe-out not seen since the Goldwater debacle of 1964.
They dream of the open convention that finally turns to a “safe” loser who wouldn’t frighten either women or horses. The convention might settle for John Kasich or Marco Rubio, but the elites prefer someone else, even it means awarding Mitt Romney another chance. Mr. Romney says he’s not interested, but why else would he abandon the gentleman’s way he ran against Barack Obama just to scorch the earth around Donald Trump? Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, is a favorite of some of the elites, but he set few hearts aflutter as Mr. Romney’s running mate four years ago.
The schemers think that if they succeed in nominating another respectable loser, running on the familiar Republican mantra of “vote for us, we’re not as bad as you think,” the Trump legions will fall in line, tug a forelock, and march as instructed. If they think that, they have learned nothing from the Trump phenomenon, the enthusiasm that he inspires, and the disgust of millions of conservatives who are fed up with polite losers who live to make no waves.
The elites should chill out, forget the inside schemes, work for their favorite candidates, watch the nomination process play out and unite for the most important election in decades. The alternative is Hillary Clinton and a runaway liberal Supreme Court that is far more frightening than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
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