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 The country's top elected Republican, House of Representatives
Speaker Paul Ryan, said he was not interested in an effort to draft
him into the White House race.
And U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative presidential hopeful,
ruled out a deal to pick a compromise Republican candidate at the
party's July convention, which senior party figures see as their
best chance to stop the unpredictable billionaire.
"The D.C. power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the
liking of the establishment. If that will happen we will have a
manifold revolt in this country," Cruz said at the Conservative
Political Action Conference outside Washington.
"You want to beat Donald Trump, you beat Donald Trump with the
voters," he said.
Party leaders worry Trump would not be able to beat Democratic
front-runner Hillary Clinton in the election, but time is running
out after he won most of the states that voted in this week's Super
Tuesday.
 Senior Republicans also fear Trump's plans to build a wall on the
U.S.-Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the United States
will turn off voters in November and upset U.S. allies.
Others note his past support for liberal policies and question
whether he has any agenda other than advancing himself.
"I don’t think he actually carries the conservative mantle. He's a
little too crass for me," said Michele Minter, a San Diego executive
assistant who was attending CPAC.
Trump, a former reality TV star, often plays by his own set of
rules. He canceled plans to speak at CPAC, normally an essential
stop for ambitious Republicans, and will instead attend a rally in
Kansas.
The real estate magnate, who is drawing support from many
blue-collar Republicans concerned about illegal immigration and
stagnant wages, has won most Republican nominating contests and
leads in many polls for the primary contests still to come.
"I’m not a normal Republican," he said to huge cheers at a rally in
Warren, Michigan.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the only candidate to ever
challenge Trump's months-long lead in opinion polls, officially
ended his White House bid.
"There are a lot of people who love me, they just won't vote for
me," Carson said in a speech at CPAC, held in National Harbor,
Maryland.
RYAN 'NOT INTERESTED'
A new group called the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers
with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, seeking to raise
money to push Ryan as a Republican alternative.
Ryan, a budget wonk who was the Republican vice presidential
candidate in 2012, is seen by many in the party as a unifier after
he took the speaker's job last year to unite establishment
Republican lawmakers and conservative upstarts in the House.
"He is flattered, but not interested," Ryan spokeswoman AshLee
Strong said in an email on Friday.
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As Trump cements his front-runner status, senior party figures hope
to deny him enough delegates to clinch the nomination, which would
give them the chance to choose a compromise candidate at their
convention in Cleveland.
The last time that happened at a Republican convention was in 1948
when Thomas Dewey was nominated.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said there was
an 85 to 90 percent chance that the party will not face that
scenario this year.
Mitt Romney and John McCain, the party's last two presidential
nominees, called on Republicans to halt Trump's rise by backing
whichever candidate was strongest in their state, a form of tactical
voting.
Few elected officials are rallying behind the "Dump Trump" banner.
The party's 31 state governors, for example, are not lining up
behind an alternative. Only five have endorsed Florida Senator Marco
Rubio and one has backed Cruz, in a sharp contrast to previous years
when governors overwhelmingly endorsed the party's eventual nominee.
Rubio has only one state so far and is gearing up for what could be
a make-or-break contest in his home state on March 15. Cruz said
Saturday he planned to open 10 campaign offices there, in what could
be an effort to force the rival senator out of the race.
Trump is expected to extend his lead on Saturday, when a total of
155 delegates are at stake in Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky.
Democrats were happy to let Republicans fight amongst themselves.
"We can sit back and let them light their own dumpster fire and wait
until they're finished," said Eddie Vale, spokesman for American
Bridge, a Clinton-allied group which collects negative research on
Republican candidates.
"They’re giving us so much great video footage that we could run ads
between now and November of nothing but Republicans attacking
Trump," Vale told Reuters.
Nationally, Trump has the support of 41 percent of Republican
voters, compared to 19 percent who back Cruz and 16 percent who back
Rubio, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data.
(Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Emily Stephenson, Eric Beech,
and Ginger Gibson; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Bill Trott
and Alistair Bell)
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