By Philip Rucker and Robert Costa May 14 at 12:36 PM
A band of exasperated Republicans — including 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a handful of veteran consultants and members of the conservative intelligentsia — is actively plotting to draft an independent presidential candidate who could keep Donald Trump from the White House.

These GOP figures are commissioning private polling, lining up major funding sources­ and courting potential contenders, according to interviews with more than a dozen Republicans involved in the discussions. The effort has been sporadic all spring but has intensified significantly in the 10 days since Trump effectively locked up the Republican nomination.

Those involved concede that an independent campaign at this late stage is probably futile, and they think they have only a couple of weeks to launch a credible bid. But these Republicans — including commentators William Kristol and Erick Erickson and strategists Mike Murphy, Stuart Stevens and Rick Wilson — are so repulsed by the prospect of Trump as commander in chief that they are desperate to take action.

Their top recruiting prospects are freshman Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a conservative who has become one of Trump’s sharpest critics, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who withdrew from the Republican presidential race May 4. Romney is among those who have made personal overtures to both men in recent days, according to several people with knowledge of the former Massachusetts governor’s activities.

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The recruiters also delved into the world of reality television for someone who might out-Trump Trump: Mark Cuban, the brash billionaire businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team.

Again and again, though, these anti-Trump Republicans have heard the same tepid response: Thanks, but no thanks.

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To many political professionals, the notion of winning the presidency from outside the two-party system is pure fantasy. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spent considerable time and money studying his chances­ for an independent run only to conclude in March that there was no plausible path.

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The career of the individual would come to an end, and he would have a difficult spot in history for being responsible for putting Hillary Clinton in the White House,” said Patrick J. Buchanan, a conservative who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket.

Buchanan was dismissive of the current efforts. “These are the mice trying to bell the cat — only they can’t get one mouse to go out and do it,” he said.

Some anti-Trump Republicans are downsizing their ambitions to a more focused, state-specific effort. Murphy, who ran a super PAC for former Florida governor Jeb Bush in his failed 2016 bid, is pushing one such proposal. Murphy envisions an independent candidate on what he termed “an honorable mission” in Colorado, New Hampshire and Ohio — three battleground states with relatively lax ballot-access rules.

“Running an anti-Trump protest candidate in a handful of swing states really appeals to me,” Murphy said. “You could deny Trump the presidency and perhaps help important Senate and other down-ballot races­ by giving another choice to Republican voters who abhor Hillary Clinton and can’t cross the moral line to vote for Trump.”

One related objective is to prevent both Clinton and Trump from clinching a majority in the electoral college and thus throwing the presidential election to the House of Representatives, under the provision of the 12th Amendment of the Constitution. This scenario played out in 1824, when Andrew Jackson won a plurality of electoral and popular votes but was defeated in the House by John Quincy Adams.

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The third-party plotters represent only a sliver of what in the primaries became known as the “Never Trump” movement. Many Republicans opposed to him — from former Texas governor Rick Perry to Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) — now are lining up behind the presumptive nominee, if not always enthusiastically.

“You’re talking about a very shallow group,” said Ed Cox, chairman of the New York Republican Party and a Trump supporter. He criticized most of the organizers as conservatives who care more about “their own intellectual constructs” than the “voice of the people.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...omepage%2Fstory

Meanwhile Ben Sasse, the faux Tea Party Republican, was reprimanded by the Nebraska legislature, 400 to 8 today for his #NeverTrump activities.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/05/...rump-sen-sasse/