Hungry for a Mitt alternative, some GOPers are still pushing for Daniels or Christie. Worry over Mitt sparks talk of Tampa

There are growing calls for an alternative to Mitt Romney as the Republican standard-bearer, with the names of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie again being seen as the most likely saviors.

With concerns over Romney rising after a series of gaffes and polls showing him losing to Rick Santorum in Michigan — a state in which he was born and raised — and with a protracted primary fight ahead, some Republican activists are desperately looking for alternatives. Most concede that it’s late in the game and such a scenario is highly unlikely.


But the uncertainty and volatility of the Republican contest has led to detailed talk of either a “brokered” convention or simply a “contested” one, in which the GOP nominee isn’t even close to being settled by the time Republicans convene in Tampa in August. The last time the GOP race was unsettled at convention time was in 1976.

Indiana GOP Chairman Eric Holcomb, one of Gov. Daniels’s closest advisers, revealed to POLITICO that “the whispers have become shouts, the knocks on [Daniels’s] door have become fist pounding.”

“Republicans are fretting the four dancing now can’t beat Obama in the fall — so their national talent search continues,” Holcomb said, adding that the pleas had come from “the adults” in the party.

The Daniels adviser said the Indiana governor’s State of the Union response speech prompted a spike in the chatter.

“Handwritten letters from around the country flooded in after his response to the State of the Union,” Holcomb said. “He can’t go anywhere without someone stopping him [and] asking to reconsider and present a clear vision, unify folks like he did in Indiana and lead another comeback. Also, Indiana’s legislative session adjourns no later than March 14, [and] might adjourn earlier, thereby freeing him up a bit — and seasoned politicos know that as they game this out.”

Despite the fact that he is a top Romney surrogate, Christie, too, has received entreaties from senior Republicans, sources said, with the pitches rising again in recent weeks as Romney has struggled.

The New Jersey governor hasn’t budged from the position he took last year, when he said “no,” despite pleas coming from the likes of Nancy Reagan and Henry Kissinger. Christie also campaigned for Romney in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, appearing at multiple events.

And just as Christie shows no signs of changing his mind, Daniels also appears unlikely to reverse course.

“He respects those approaching him greatly, but no vote from the women’s caucus at home yet,” Holcomb quipped, alluding to the opposition against a run from the Hoosier’s wife and daughters. “[It] might take an Occupy on the governor’s residence lawn!”

Indeed, despite the grumbling, party operatives admit that the chances of a late entrant at this stage are akin to a walk down Imagination Lane.

The GOP primary has been filled, so far, with “magical ideas that Ronald Reagan is going to come back and be our nominee,” said Henry Barbour, nephew of Haley Barbour and the Mississippi committeeman who supported Rick Perry and now backs Romney. “I think it’s clear that either Gov. Romney or Sen. Santorum is going to be the nominee.”

Barbour added: “And Romney has a distinct advantage, and I expect him to be the nominee. But I think it’s one of them or the other. And even if somebody thought they could have this sort of fairy-tale candidacy come July and August, I think it’s fantasy.”

Jeb Bush also remains one of the first names that rolls off the tongues of wishful thinkers who remain unsatisfied with the field. Those Republicans fear that the current race is only increasing President Barack Obama’s reelection chances — and imperiling the hopes of recapturing the Senate and holding the House. The talk also reflects concern among some establishment Republicans about whether Santorum would be a drag on down-ballot candidates in a general election.

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul described the campaign as pushing forward, as it has been.

“It’s steady as she goes,” she said of the new round of chatter. “We’ve seen opponents come and go, and through it all we’ve kept our focus on jobs and the economy.”

Romney’s difficulty in fending off Santorum is, to veteran Republicans, a vivid indicator of his problems connecting with voters.

“I do think that on the Republican side there, there may be more demand than there is supply in terms of the candidates, but that’s the nature of the process,” former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

On the same show, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, himself one of the potential candidates last year, echoed that sentiment, saying, “It’s just too late, I think.”

Most party veterans still believe Romney will muscle his way to the nomination. But even among his own donors, it’s not difficult to find concern about his general election prospects and anxiety about the potentially chaotic nature of the rest of the primary and the Tampa convention.

“If Romney can keep his organization together, he can get there,” one senior party leader said. “But it will be ugly.”

Chatter is already taking place among GOP insiders about how to handle complications such as faithless delegates.

There are roughly 30 states and territories where delegates aren’t bound to a particular candidate. The majority of the other states, according to a number of party officials, call for delegates to be bound for a first round of balloting but not the ensuing rounds.

“The dirty little secret is: At the end of the day, these guys and gals can vote any way they want,” said a Republican who has attended national conventions for decades. “Each state has different (laws) on pledged delegates.”

Earlier this year, a group of GOP Washington lawyers began to meet privately to review party rules passed following the epic 1976 nomination battle between President Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Romney is the clear delegate leader at this point, but there is a lot of game left to go, and many believe he won’t claim a majority of delegates until well into April, when more winner-take-all states have voted. Many Romney backers, and even some of his critics inside the party, still believe he will likely begin to rack up the needed delegates at that point, given his organizational advantages.

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer called the convention handicapping akin to “three games or four games into the MLB season trying to predict how the World Series is going to go. I think from an RNC perspective, we have four great candidates, one of them will be the nominee and we will go on to defeat Obama in November.”

But the possible convention issues are hardly limited to faithless delegates.

There is also the scenario, first reported by POLITICO’s Mike Allen, in which a late entrant (like, say, a Daniels or a Christie) arrives after Super Tuesday on March 6, which is still before the filing deadlines in some of the most delegate-rich states such as California and New Jersey.

A document is circulating among several Washington Republicans titled “GOP Delegate Count Will Build Slowly,” noting how many delegates are still up for grabs after Super Tuesday.

A “contested” convention could result, meaning the party heads into August without a clear nominee. A late entrant could try to amass enough delegates to win the nomination, given that only 34 percent of the total delegates are in play in contests before Super Tuesday. But they might have to pick up the remainder in a contested convention where delegates would still be up for grabs.

A candidate entering under that scenario — and it would mean amassing the necessary ballot-access petitions, which can take weeks, in an extremely short amount of time — would make a play by winning delegates in post-Super Tuesday states and then heading into the convention where they could peel off delegates.

Then there is the “brokered” convention, at which a new candidate could essentially be airlifted in, and, through an arranged deal, awarded the right number of delegates. The notion of dropping in a candidate at the last minute strikes many as extreme and hard to imagine.

But a “brokered” convention could also be the end result of a contested one, with power players uniting if no one agrees with a majority of delegates, or if no one can assemble a majority after the first few rounds of balloting.

A brokered convention is unlikely to happen if a number of hopefuls drop out. But it’s conceivable if all four of the current Republicans running stay in the race, as they have pledged, as delegates would continue to be split among them.

The March calendar could also be problematic for Romney as it features a number of caucus states — with proportional delegate rules — and contests with conservative electorates.

In such a scenario, the power brokers would likely be party elders, like former RNC and Republican Governors Association chairmen and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, according to multiple Republican insiders, along with figures like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Marco Rubio. But the major power figures would be Republican governors who would hold sway over their state delegations, including Florida’s Rick Scott, Ohio’s John Kasich and Michigan’s Rick Snyder.

Republican leaders in populous states without a major elected GOPer, like California and New York, may see their GOP chairmen playing a role as well.

If one of these nightmarish scenarios materializes, Republicans believe the party will eventually need to either appoint a senior statesman in the mold of former Secretary of State James Baker to oversee the convention or find a rules maven who can be an honest broker when it comes to credentials. One such name already being floated: Billy Pitts, a respected former congressional aide well-versed in parliamentary procedure from decades working for former House GOP leader Bob Michel and more recently as the staff director of the House Rules Committee.

“I’ve never been to a brokered convention,” said David Norcross, an RNC member from New Jersey who is neutral in the primary. “There hasn’t been a brokered convention in my lifetime. … If this does get to, say, August with no clear winner, you can look for a fight in the convention credentials committee for who has how many delegates.”

It would played out in both the credentials and the rules committees, he said, adding, “If we get to August and none of the people running have enough delegates, that’s a clear indication that … the Republican primary electorate is not satisfied with any of them.”

Still, Norcross said he didn’t believe things would still be unsettled by the time of the convention. The only people that he hears discussing that possibility, he said, “are journalists.”

Mike Allen contributed to this report.