INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Group Of Top Republicans Found Guilty Of Plotting Third Party Run

By Coburn Palmer
Published on: 07:00 PST, Mar 18, 2016

Three stealthy Republican leaders met with other conservatives on Thursday behind closed doors for a clandestine meeting to plot the demise of their party’s front-runner.

The group, called Conservatives of Faith, desperately wants to stop Donald Trump from claiming the Republican nomination at all costs; if that fails, they’re reportedly going to run a third party candidate against him.

That third party split could become permanent.

The organizers behind the meeting are Robert K. Fischer, a South Dakota businessman, Erick Erickson, an adamant Trump denouncer who founded RedState.com and Bill Wichterman, who was George W. Bush’s connection to the conservative movement, according to WND.

“If you can never support Donald Trump, then please join us. Please join other conservative leaders to strategize how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, and if he is the Republican nominee for president, to offer a true conservative candidate in the general election.”

The conservative group spent three hours debating whether the Trump Train could actually be derailed or if anti-Donald Republicans would have to go outside the party to defeat him.

Arizona Rep. Trent Franks attended the secretive meeting to help pick a conservative politician the group could support for a third party run, reports The Washington Post.

“It’s certainly not too late. You could get another party on the ballot. A candidate could be picked as late as August. … It would have to be a movement conservative.”

A group of conservative Republican donors has already paid a consulting firm to study the possibility of mounting a third party run to defeat Donald Trump’s run for president.

If the group can gather behind a single candidate, the presidential race could see a third party candidate as early as April 1. The outside campaign would need to gather more than 4,000 signatures a day to put their candidate on the ballot in 11 delegate rich states in order to pose a serious threat.

If the Republican party splits in two for the 2016 presidential race, the winner is likely to be the Democratic nominee, but it could also signal a permanent split in the conservative party.

The conservative establishment’s inability to accept Trump as their nominee is eerily reminiscent of last summer when Republican leaders feared The Donald would make his own third party run.

Back then, the Republican establishment feared an outside Trump candidacy would resemble a Ross Perot run for the White House that would tip the balance toward the Democrats.

The Donald eventually agreed to support whoever won the Republican Party nomination, but the conservative establishment made no such promise.

Now, conservative leaders like Erick Erickson, who helped organize Thursday’s secretive meeting, are vowing to oppose a Trump nomination no matter what it costs. Erickson wrote in his column on Monday that Republicans who supported The Donald were betraying the values their party stood for.

“I will not rally to Trump. If Trump is able to get the nomination…the Republican Party will not deserve my support… if it chooses to nominate a pro-abortion liberal masquerading as a conservative, who preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies and has an army of white supremacists online as his loudest cheerleaders.”

What do you think? Is it wrong for Republican leaders to be plotting a third party run against Donald Trump?

[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]

Share this article: Group Of Top Republicans Found Guilty Of Plotting Third Party Run
Politics conservatives Donald Trump
More from Inquisitr