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Leverage: Romney offers GOP plan to stop a Trump candidacy

Leverage is a new column to highlight, in real time, opportunities to put the U.S. electoral and governance systems on a functional track.

Leverage: Romney offers GOP plan to stop a Trump candidacy
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By David L. Nevins,
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as co-publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
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Debilyn Molineaux
Debilyn Molineaux

Debilyn Molineaux serves as the catalyst for the American Future project to help everyday Americans discover and believe in a future that will be "worth it" to work together for the sake of our nation.

Debilyn brings a passion to her work that is contagious to all around her. Hailing from a conservative, agricultural community, Debilyn started her career as a small business owner, working with community businesses to promote and grow their own operations through advertising and marketing. After engaging other women business leaders, Debilyn was inspired to become more active in the political process. Her own personal experiences -- as a small business owner, a local candidate for office, and an elected president of a national organization -- have given her enormous insight into the challenges facing citizens who want to get involved and organizations that want to scale their impact.

Debilyn is a serial entrepreneur, co-founding many organizations and transpartisan projects over her 20+ year career in establishing the democracy ecosystem. She has co-founded the Bridge Alliance, Living Room Conversations and the National Week of Conversation. She formerly was co-publisher of The Fulcrum and continues as advisor for Citizen Connect, Listen First Project, AllSides and other organizations, individuals within the democracy ecosystem.

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Jul 25, 2023

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

Recognizing that Trump is adept at sweeping a field of candidates who oppose him (example: 2016 GOP primaries), it was reported yesterday that Senator Mitt Romney has a coherent plan to stop former president Trump from getting elected in 2024.

Reported by CNN and Politico, Romney is calling for a Feb. 26, 2024 deadline for Republicans to coalesce around one alternative candidate to former President Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination. This plan would leverage the GOP’s ability to unite and eliminate Trump’s advantage of a dispersed field. Trump is expert at picking off weaker candidates; less so against a stronger candidate. Romney has called on donors and others with big influence to put pressure on candidates to drop out on or before that date, before the March 5th Super Tuesday primaries. After that date, it would be too late to unify the party around anyone other than Trump. Additionally, this would mitigate some of the GOP rules changes made after the 2016 primary from proportional delegate count to a winner-take-all.

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"Donors who are backing someone with a slim chance of winning should seek a commitment from the candidate to drop out and endorse the person with the best chance of defeating Mr. Trump by Feb. 26," Romney wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

The contentious relationship between Romney and Trump is no secret and goes back to the election of 2022. In a speech at the University of Utah at the time Romney called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.” Romney went on to say:

“Dishonesty is Trump’s hallmark: He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq. Wrong, he spoke in favor of invading Iraq. He said he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating 9/11. Wrong, he saw no such thing. He imagined it. His is not the temperament of a stable, thoughtful leader. His imagination must not be married to real power.”

Today’s voters must educate themselves to see through disinformation, misinformation, outright lies and deception. Only voters can determine the best leader for our collective well being. We agree with Romney that Trump is not fit to be president of the United States and believe that the election of Donald Trump would be a significant danger to the rule of law and to the defense and protection of our Constitution. One has only to look at the 2025 Project, led by Trump acolytes to see the danger of dismantling our democracy itself.

Voters can signal their power at the ballot box. We need voters to leverage themselves and demand a higher standard from our elected representatives. A new paradigm of politics is needed based on civil political discourse, critical thinking and personal accountability to be demanded by the electorate of its leadership. We believe the most effective solutions to our nation's problems are found through rigorous engagement across differences with a shared result. If you are a GOP voter, we ask you to back Romney’s plan with your support.

The United States is at a crossroads. It is time for us to overcome our complacency, apathy, contempt and disgust of the way things are, politically. We the voters must set things right. This is one opportunity, available now.

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Gen Z and the Dangerous Allure of Political Violence

A 17-year-old Wisconsin teenager wanted to kill the president, overthrow the United States government, and kickstart a revolution – so he shot dead his mother and stepfather. This weekend, the FBI revealed that Nikita Casap lived for weeks with their decomposing bodies and stole $14,000 to “obtain the financial means” to assassinate President Trump, the first domino in his far-right extremist plan.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a young man use violence for political ends. Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO, citing criticisms of the U.S. healthcare system as justification for the murder. Dylann Roof hoped to incite a race war when he walked into a Black church and gunned down nine people. Kyle Rittenhouse traveled to a Black Lives Matter protest with an AR-15-style weapon and fatally shot two people.

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As states race to regulate AI, they face significant challenges in crafting effective legislation that both protects consumers and allows for continued innovation in this rapidly evolving field.

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Often referred to as 'AI bias', it is the underlying prejudice in the data that's used to create AI algorithms which can ultimately result in discrimination - usually due to AI systems reflecting very human biases. These biases can creep in for a number of reasons. The data used to train the AI models may over- or under-represent certain groups. It can also be caused by a developer unfairly weighting factors in algorithmic decision-making based on their own conscious or unconscious biases.

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Picture this: A person launches themselves into a crowd at a concert, and for a moment, everything hangs in the balance. Will they fall? Will they float? It all depends on countless hands moving in coordination, strangers united in a common purpose. Some push up while others stabilize, creating a dynamic, living system that defies gravity.

At this moment, we are all suspended between falling and flying, carried by a wave of global resistance that nobody controls but all can help shape. Think about what makes crowd surfing work. It's not just about the individual being carried – it's about the collective choreography happening beneath. With too much force in one direction, you fall. Not enough support in another, you crash. The magic happens in the balance.

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Concern Over Education and Family Services in Rhode Island

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Concern Over Education and Family Services in Rhode Island

Ahead of Election Day 2024, the Fulcrum launched We the People, a series elevating the voices and visibility of the persons most affected by the decisions of elected officials.

Now, we continue with the series The 50, a four-year multimedia project that visits the public where they live across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Providence, Rhode Island, founded in 1636, is one of the oldest cities in New England and one of the first cities in the country to industrialize, noted for its textile manufacturing and subsequent machine tool, jewelry, and silverware industries.

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