What the newest effort gains in terms of ability (in theory, at least) to change the rules at the convention, it loses in terms of lateness. The time for stopping Trump was months ago—not now, with a month to go before the convention and Trump having won a majority of delegates and a wide plurality of primary votes. Now trying to replace him will require a clear contravention of the will of Republican voters, and huge violations of protocol. If people think the primary showed the anger of GOP voters toward the GOP establishment, just think what will happen if organizers at the convention use procedural hijinks to try to throw Trump over.

The other problem is that, like Kristol, these delegates have no one to crown as a savior. Paul Ryan, once the name commonly mentioned as a white knight, has gone off and endorsed Trump, which makes him an even more remote possibility. As Cook Political’s Amy Walter wrote this week, trying to kill the idea of a dump-Trump campaign once and for all:

More important, as I have written many times before, an “Anti-Trump” campaign can’t succeed without a “Pro-Another Candidate” to replace him. The most obvious choices to oust Trump at the convention – Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz – have said they aren’t interested in putting up a fight. Leaders of the #NeverTrump movement have failed to produce a third-party option. You can’t have a coup without a replacement. Period.

As with the effort to draft David French, it’s probably unfair to judge the supporters on the basis of how plausible the campaign is. The goal of nominating someone like French was to give conservatives who refused to vote for Trump but couldn’t stomach voting for Hillary Clinton a candidate who they could be proud to support—even if his chances of winning were effectively nil. That’s probably the best argument for an attempt to defeat Trump at the convention, too: not that it’s likely to work, but that it gives Trump’s opponents the chance to vote their conscience and say they did everything they could.

At this juncture, there are only two obvious people who can stop Donald Trump. One is Trump, who could either for some reason drop out of the race rather than face defeat, or else so thoroughly alienate his party by some statement or deed that there was a groundswell to dump him. But that would require much more than a few delegates scheming over rules and procedures. It would require a full-scale rebellion. (In fact, “rebels” is just how Trump referred to his intraparty detractors in an interview with The New York Times.) The second is Hillary Clinton, who currently leads him in polling. She of course remains unpalatable to most Republicans—though a few have started to hold their noses and go for it.