US election 2016: 'Anybody but Trump' movement gathering steam ahead of Republican convention

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The organisers of a renewed Republican effort to deny Donald Trump the party’s presidential nomination say they now have the support of several hundred delegates, with just weeks to go until the GOP convention. The group is seeking to alter party rules by adding a “conscience clause” allowing delegates, if they so wish, to vote against the presumptive nominee – and against the results of the Republican primaries.

“This literally is an ‘Anybody but Trump’ movement,” Kendal Unruh, a Colorado delegate and member of the convention’s Rules Committee who is helping to organise the anti-Trump faction, told the Washington Post. “Nobody has any idea who is going to step in and be the nominee, but we’re not worried about that. We’re just doing that job to make sure that he’s not the face of our party.”

Ms Unruh said the group comprised “pockets of resistance” made up largely of former supporters of Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich, all of whom were soundly beaten by the property mogul during the primaries. Steve Lonegan, a spokesman for the Courageous Conservatives PAC, which previously backed Mr Cruz, told CNN he believed that at least 250 delegates were on board. On Sunday, the group said it was fundraising – in part through Mr Lonegan’s PAC – to finance a recruitment drive and a legal defence fund.

A month before the party meets in Cleveland, GOP leaders are once again being forced to play down the prospect of a contested convention. Sean Spicer, chief strategist for the Republican National Committee (RNC), said in a statement that talk of changing convention rules was “silly”, adding: “There is no organised effort, strategy or leader of this so-called movement. It is nothing more than a media creation and a series of tweets.”

Even some Republicans who have endorsed Mr Trump are concerned by his toxic rhetoric, be it racial attacks on the federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University, or his call this weekend to begin profiling Muslim Americans in the wake of the recent mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Yet the anti-Trump movement faces an uphill struggle even to add its “conscience clause”, let alone overturn the will of Republican primary voters. At least 57 members of the 112 Rules Committee members must vote for the change, which then has to be ratified by a majority of the convention’s 2,400 delegates.

It is also unclear whom they might recruit to be a standard-bearer, given that many of the party’s most prominent anti-Trump figures have either counted themselves out of contesting the convention or declined to attend the event at all. But even a quelled rebellion would be a blow to Mr Trump, who is slumping further in the polls with his campaign in apparent disarray.

On Monday, the billionaire reality TV star ditched his controversial campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. His campaign has so far shown little sign of ramping up its national organisation or its fundraising operation to get on a general election footing. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is leading by 5.8 per cent in national polls, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. She also holds the lead in a majority of crucial swing states.

Mr Trump has accused his erstwhile primary rivals Mr Cruz and Jeb Bush of manipulating attempts to derail his candidacy, describing efforts to deny him the nomination as “totally illegal” and “a rebuke of the millions of people who feel so strongly about what I am saying.” Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, he also said the anti-Trump faction was a “hoax” that had been “made up by the press”.

Several delegates have reported facing pressure from party colleagues to support Mr Trump, including threats of ostracisation and fines. But House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking Republican in Congress, has left the door open for a delegate effort to dethrone the presumptive nominee at the convention. Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Mr Ryan said it was “not my place to decide” whether delegates ought to be bound or unbound.

“It is not my job to tell delegates what to do, what not to do, or to weigh in on things like that. They write the rules. They make their decisions,” said Mr Ryan, who will act as chairman of the July convention. “The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience."