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Washington • Jumping off the political sideline, Mitt Romney on Thursday attempted to blunt front-runner Donald Trump's seemingly unstoppable trajectory toward the GOP nomination and set his party on the path to its first brokered convention in nearly 70 years where another candidate could emerge.
It was, to some, the necessary, albeit late, pivot for Republicans away from an unqualified, even dangerous, candidate who looks to sweep several key primary battles in the coming weeks. But to others it was a desperate gambit that would only bolster Trump in the eyes of voters disgusted with the party and establishment figures like Romney.
Many were left wondering about Romney's underlying motivations. Could this be a bid to claim the nomination for himself in a disputed convention, or is he attempting to play kingmaker? The most immediate impact was to jolt the race in which Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are vying to overtake Trump, but still remain in his shadow in polls and vote counts.
"Mitt played an important role in refocusing this race on Trump's many failures and inadequacies," said Tim Miller, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group Our Principles PAC. "Plus he put the brakes on the false media narrative that Trump is inevitable, when the reality is he has fewer delegates than Cruz and Rubio combined."
Romney, Miller said, offered "moral clarity" at a time when the party needs it.
Some GOP leaders have fretted that Trump as the party's standard-bearer could doom Republican chances to take back the White House and harm down-ballot races, giving Democrats a good shot at reclaiming the Senate majority. Trump now holds 338 delegates to Cruz's 236 and Rubio's 112, and political handicappers say Trump is ahead of projections to lay claim to the nomination.
If no candidate, gets the required 1,237 delegates before the July national convention, it would lead to the first brokered convention since 1948, when Thomas Dewey claimed the nomination, only to lose to Harry Truman.
Former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen said Romney's effort could provide "cover" to other party leaders to come out and forcefully declare that they won't vote for Trump even if he is the nominee. It's time, Cullen said, "to be counted."
"Even if the party goes down in flames this fall, I think it's important morally and otherwise for us to have made clear that we were not supporting this guy under any circumstance," he said.
Still, even among those inclined to oppose Trump, there were clearly doubts after Romney's speech.
"If you did a Venn diagram of Romney supporters and Trump voters, there is probably not a lot of intersection," said Mark McKinnon, a veteran GOP presidential campaign consultant. "So, [I] doubt it changes the equation much."
A former Romney top aide, Kevin Madden, suggested that Romney's comments would have had more impact earlier in the race.
"People's perceptions on Donald Trump have been shaped pretty much by Donald Trump over the last eight months. Now, in the space of a few weeks, we're trying to reverse that. That is a significant challenge," Madden told The Los Angeles Times.
Still, he added, "the worse thing to do is to do nothing, so the fact there is an effort and it is focused on exposing Donald Trump and his vulnerabilities in an effort to get a real conservative and save the party is important enough for a lot of folks."
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who ran against Romney in 2012, slammed Romney's push to force a brokered convention.
"Plotting to manipulate the will of the people is undemocratic, dangerous and the height of arrogance," he said Thursday.
Huntsman has said he'd support Trump if he won the nomination and said that they agree on campaign finance reform.
Even Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a strong Romney supporter, wasn't ready to take a hard stand against Trump.
He attended Romney's speech and later told reporters the Republican primary has devolved into a "junior high school food fight" when it should be a substantial conversation of how to fix the nation's problems.
That said, "even Donald Trump, to me, has some strengths," said Herbert, naming his willingness to say "whatever comes to his mind, sometimes that is a little refreshing." He also said Trump has a larger-than-life personality and off-the-charts self confidence.
"But sometimes, he's a little bit blustery and that is a little off-putting to me," Herbert said, calling for less name calling and more concrete proposals.
Romney said his blunt denouncement of the man most likely to win his party's nomination came in part from a desire to be able to look his kids and grandkids in the eye and say that he tried.
"If we do go into that abyss, I think he'd always have regrets that he didn't say what he felt," said Kirk Jowers, a friend of Romney's and the former director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "He felt that this was 'my last chance to speak my piece,' and give Republicans a chance to have a moment of reflection."
But Romney and Jowers believe no candidate other than Trump has a realistic chance of winning the nomination outright as the race speeds through the March primaries with states like Florida and Ohio voting on March 15.
A brokered convention, on the other hand, opens the door for outside candidates. Even as Romney said he wasn't seeking the nomination and that one of the remaining three candidates should get the nod, it is highly likely that his supporters would push Romney to enter the contest.
As the party rules now stand, it would take the delegations of eight states to nominate a new candidate in a deadlocked convention. Utah Republican Party Chairman James Evans said he has seven states ready to back a Romney candidacy.
Jowers has repeatedly heard speculation about Romney or House Speaker Paul Ryan, who ran as Romney's vice presidential pick in 2012.
Jowers argues that if Romney really saw himself as the convention nominee, he wouldn't have delivered Thursday's speech, or at least he would have toned it down. It's difficult to imagine Trump delegates backing a Romney nomination now.