The U.S. Republican Party maybe facing a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea when it holds its national convention in July next year to decide who to nominate as its standard bearer in the November 2016 presidential election.
Many party leaders are known to be against the current front-runner Donald Trump mainly because of his inflammatory statements. The Washington Post reported that these leaders met late last week to discuss how to cope with Trump's rise to the top of most GOP polls and what to do if no candidate wins a majority of delegates heading into the party's convention.
But if the GOP succeeds in ditching Trump, pundits said this would seriously divide the party and its electorate, ultimately handing the U.S. presidency on a silver platter to the expected Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Making the situation even more problematic for the party, Ben Carson, one of Trump's serious rivals in the Republican race, threatened to join Trump in leaving the party if there are signs that the nomination process is being manipulated, USA Today reported.
"If the leaders of the Republican Party want to destroy the party, they should continue to hold meetings like the one described in the Washington Post this morning. If this was the beginning of a plan to subvert the will of the voters and replace it with the will of the political elite, I assure you Donald Trump will not be the only one leaving the party," Carson said in a statement.
He said if the Washington Post report was true that indeed the Republican Party leaders were trying to make a deal on their own presidential nominee, "every voter who is standing for change must know they are being betrayed. I won't stand for it."
The retired neurosurgeon said next summer's Cleveland convention could be the last Republican National Convention if leaders try to manipulate it.
"I am prepared to lose fair and square, as I am sure is Donald," Carson said. "But I will not sit by and watch a theft. I intend on being the nominee. If I am not, the winner will have my support. If the winner isn't our nominee, then we have a massive problem."
Carson told ABC News on Friday that he had no plans to run as an independent. "But I certainly don't want to be a part of corruption," he said, stopping short of saying he would drop out of the race if he left the Republican Party.
"I'll leave that up to you to speculate," he added with a smile.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, another GOP presidential candidate, expressed solidarity with Carson and Trump. In a Boston radio interview, he said, "If the establishment tries to block an outsider from winning the nomination, there'll be war within the party, and they'll destroy the party."
Trump has not ruled out a third-party run, despite having pledged not to do so in September. While an independent run is "highly unlikely," he said, the pledge is a "two-way street."
"If they don't treat me with a certain amount of decorum and respect, if they don't treat me as by far the front-runner, if the playing field is not level, then certainly all options are open," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon.
