Senior GOP officials and fundraisers are scrambling to prevent the return of Donald Trump and are debating how they can stop the former US president from winning re-election in 2024.

“However, they don’t have a clear plan to stop him,” comments Politico, highlighting the concerns of politicians who fear that Trump will again take over the split Republican Party, taking away the 30-40% he has accumulated, and in the first 2016 primaries of the year. This percentage may be enough to win the nomination.

Members of the Republican Party are looking distraught, and even former Trump supporters are reluctant to publicly acknowledge what they all discussed privately: “If the former president wins the primary again, he will most likely lose to the new Joe Biden, even if some polls show that he is ahead of his opponent,” notes Politico.

GOP members, fundraisers, analysts and political insiders admit they are debating ways to ensure Trump doesn’t once again take advantage of the divisive atmosphere to win the Republican nomination.

The Great Fear of the Republicans

In 2020, after the election and the Capitol Hill Invasion, major Republican donor Eric Levin urged the party to distance itself from Trump. He now describes it as a “metastatic cancer” which, “if left unchecked, will destroy the party.”

“Donald Trump is a loser. He is the first president since Hoover to lose the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency in the same term,” complains Levin.

Donors like Levin and other party insiders fear a repeat of the 2016 situation, with multiple Republicans running in the primary, leading to a split that allows Trump to win.

“Some of these high-profile Republicans are meeting with potential candidates and telling them that if they want to run, they absolutely need to… but that they should also be ready to leave long before the primaries startto ensure that the Republican Party will nominate its best candidate against Biden.”

Key donors who have discussed potential anti-Trump candidates, including former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence, say they all understand the risks to the party, if not the country, from a Trump return. One way or another, all of these potential candidates publicly criticized the former US president.

“Does Mike Pence want his legacy to be 4% of the vote and help elect Donald Trump?” commented an adviser to a major Republican sponsor. “The same goes for Mike Pompeo, the same goes for Hayley. They want to win, of course, but they will have a more compelling reason to get out of the ‘race’ early, knowing what it will mean for the country and the party.”

“Trump understands”

Trump seems to understand that a multi-candidate scenario will help him, and he remains silent, even though some of his old closest aides appear ready to run for the nomination. Instead, he’s targeting Ron de Sandys, the Florida governor who leads the polls. Trump hasn’t even lifted the gauntlet against his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who is “taunting her former boss for ‘new generation’ leadership.”

In 2016, donors and senior Democratic officials gathered ahead of the primaries in support of Hillary Clinton. If some Republicans are now pursuing the same strategy, the candidate is likely to benefit from Ron de Sandys, who outperforms Trump in some polls on comparison.

According to Politico, DeSandis has advantages, including the fact that he has raised more than $200 million for his campaign and that he is using his position in Florida to attack Democrats on cultural issues. “But he hasn’t been tested in the national political arena and there are rumors that he can be awkward in official political interactions.”