Failing Trump administration. Sad!

Correct. They run as a “sane” alternative to the GOP nominee, knowing that they have no chance of winning but will siphon enough votes out of Ohio or Florida to push the race to the Democrat.

Because he’d run as a third party candidate.

It’s really the only reason to run, even in the primary. Doing so is likely to make them a permanent pariah in the party anyway.

OK, yeah, as a third-party candidate I can see the potential. You only really need to get 6-10% of folks who would have voted R (since some D voters would inevitably switch, too), to spoil Trump’s chances.

But it would take a lot of money.

Honestly, I don’t think it would take much money at all.

If a member of the GOP with some name recognition, like Romney or Kasich, ran… they’d get a mountain of free coverage by the media.

And they wouldn’t be trying to win… winning would be hopeless. They’d just be siphoning votes. Their goal would be purely to make Trump lose. I think you could do that with free media coverage, where they’d just love the story of someone taking on Trump from the GOP side.

Is there any reason to think that Romney would do any of this?

It’d be a longshot at best at this point.

But the guy does hate Trump. And Trump is gonna start attacking him even more now.

Given the choice between Trump (brow furrowed, concern!) and a Democrat in office, I can’t believe Romney or any other GOP candidate would willingly cede control of the Presidency by running as a third party. I’d be happy to be proven wrong but I just can’t see it happening.

No. He might run in the primaries if there’s enough dirt on Trump in Mueller’s report but I think in the primaries Trump will trounce him. The hardcore right are over-represented in primary voting.

Really, though, it’s impossible to predict. All of Trump’s actions and things that came to light before the election would have sunk any other politician, but it didn’t seem to lose him many votes. Heck, the evangelicals still support him and he’s a human garbage can without any morals.

I (almost) totally agree with this.

The only quibble I have is that the media will dismiss criticism from a Republican as well, if he is now or ever has been characterized as a moderate.

I don’t see any of the current crop of Never Trumpers running as third party in the general … except maybe Comey, who would probably get at best about 1% or 2% of the vote. (Though granted that may be enough.)

Nothing about what Romney and Kasich have done in the last two years suggests they’re the type to “leave the party” over Trump.

The Party’s already left Kasich. There’s no path forward for him within the GOP at this point.

For Romney, I feel like this OpEd puts him in a similar boat. Now, he’s a bit of a special case, given he’s a Mormon in Utah, and so he could probably roll as a Senator from that state for a long while given how respected his family is within the Mormon community.

I’m tired of the talk. Talk is worthless. Ignore the talk. Wake me up when any Republican actually DOES something.

I expect it will be a long while.

In the big picture, the only way forward for the Never Trump/sane-conservative group is to split off from the GOP. They just don’t have the numbers on the right to take over the GOP. They also don’t have the numbers in the center to come even close to winning a general, which is why this option is incredibly unappealing to most potential candidates. However, it is the only way forward: split from the GOP, lose general elections while damaging the GOP and making the Dems win more often, and eventually become a centrist option by appealing to the moderate wing of the Dems as the Dems are likely to move left due to winning as well due to reaction to past GOP excesses. This is incredibly risky: it means being a loser for multiple cycles and helping the opposing party in the hopes of future growth. That’s why no one on the right has yet done it.

However, it is also the only way forward. There is simply no sign of any meaningful weight that the GOP is going to return to sanity, reject it’s reality-denying/racist/idiot facets, and in fact, there is no mechanism within the current GOP to do that: the entire cycle of the right wing media machine drives to extremism. So the GOP is going to keep going to the right (culturally, not economically) and the only question is, will the non-insane GOP folks continue to furrow their brows, hold their noses and go along, or will they grasp the nettle of losing elections and helping Dems by splitting from the GOP.

At this point, I think some kind of split is inevitable but it might be a minor flash in the pan is someone without much national following, like say, Flake, leads the split. If someone with a bit more national rep leads the split like Romney or Kasich, it would be more viable, although still a big time loser in the short term. But the only other alternative is Trump-adjacent candidates all the way down.

Yeah, the real work is getting on the ballot in all 50 states.

Trump’s death grip on the GOP exemplified:

The three things you need to know to understand this tweet are:

Don’t expect heroics out of this bunch.

The only way this happens is if the Koch Bros fund it.

Zero reason.

This is probably more likely the first shot in the 2024 election. Romney will spend the next six years griping about Trump (if he wins re-election), but then voting like a reliable Republican, or the next two about Trump and then four about the Dem President, then run in 2024 again.

Watch a Trump economic adviser just straight up lie about a bunch of shit, and get called on it in real time.

Do we know where they are currently at with Trump? I seem to recall that there wasn’t a lot of love there previously.