Disaffected Republicans seek alternatives to Trump at Romney-Ryan donor summit

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan reunited for a gathering with some of their former top donors this week

The last Republicans to top a presidential ticket before Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP are still holding out hope that a more palatable alternative to the ex-president will present itself before nominating contests for next year’s election are complete.

On Tuesday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan convened a high-level confab in Park City, Utah to discuss foreign policy, technology and business matters at this year’s edition of the annual E2 summit.

Among the attendees will be four of the candidates who’ve been vying — thus far unsuccessfully — to gain traction against Mr Trump in next year’s GOP primary: ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former vice president Mike Pence, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

The balance of the attendees at the Park City gathering are understood to be a who’s who of GOP donors who backed Mr Romney and Mr Ryan during their ill-fated campaign to deny then-president Barack Obama a second term in the 2012 general election.

Spencer Zwick, the ex-national finance chair for the 2012 Romney-Ryan campaign and a longtime confidant of the Utah senator, told Axios that the Romneyworld luminaries “don’t just accept that Donald Trump is the nominee” of their party despite most polls showing the disgraced ex-president holding a massive lead over the rest of the GOP primary field.

“That’s not in their DNA — they’re genuinely interested in a candidate they can get excited about and get behind,” Mr Zwick said.

During a question-and-answer session alongside Mr Ryan on Tuesday evening, Mr Romney reportedly said he’d be content to have any of the GOP candidates present in Park City that day serve as the party’s standard-bearer next year, characterising them as heirs to the free-market, fiscally conservative version of the GOP they knew before Mr Trump’s entry onto the political scene.

He also suggested that the Democratic Party has its own set of problems that are not so dissimilar from the populist-versus-conservative split that characterises the GOP in the Trump era.

“I think our party has multiple personality disorder, and I think the Democratic Party does as well,” he said, according to Yahoo News. “I think we’re schizophrenic. We don’t know what we are or what we stand for within our party right now”.

The Utah Senator’s comments were echoed by his erstwhile running-mate, who left Congress in 2019 after his party lost the House majority after Mr Trump’s first two years in office.

Mr Ryan reportedly told attendees that Democrats have a tougher row to hoe going forward because splits between progressives and moderates are ideological, rather than the divide in the GOP between Trump loyalists and traditional Republicans.

For his part, Mr Trump lashed out at the former GOP nominees after news of their comments broke, writing on Truth Social that they “never would have lost” to Mr Obama in 2012 had they “fought as hard against Obama as they do against President Donald J Trump”.

“But remember, Republicans ‘Eat Their Young,’ and that’s the problem with so many in our Party,” he added. “They go after the people who are on their side, rather than the Radical Left Democrats that are DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY”.