WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich launched into a team effort Monday to deny Donald Trump the party's nomination, a late-in-the-game bid the billionaire frontrunner dismissed as an act of "desperation."
With Trump poised to extend his lead in primaries Tuesday in five northeastern states, the Texas senator and Ohio governor agreed late Sunday to what amounted to a non-aggression pact in later primaries.
Kasich will forego vigorous campaigning in Indiana, and Cruz will return the favor in New Mexico and Oregon to try to deprive Trump of victories in those states.
The deal would give Cruz a chance to consolidate support in Indiana, a winner-take-all state where a Trump loss would make it much harder for him to win the nomination outright.
"Having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in November would be a sure disaster for Republicans," Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe said in a statement.
"Not only would Trump get blown out by (Hillary) Clinton or (Bernie) Sanders, but having him as our nominee would set the party back a generation."
Kasich's campaign said the aim was to open the Republican nominating convention in July in Cleveland so that a unifying figure other than Trump can emerge as the candidate.
Kasich insists he is the only one who could beat Clinton in the general election in November, but he played down the deal with Cruz as merely an effort to husband campaign resources.
"I've never told them not to vote for me," he said at a diner in Philadelphia. "They ought to vote for me."
"What's the big deal?" he told reporters as he ate breakfast at a Philadelphia diner. "I'm not campaigning in Indiana, and he's not campaigning in those other states. That's all."
"I don't have, you know, like 'Daddy Warbucks' behind me giving me all this money. I have to be careful about my resources. But furthermore, the reason why I'm in this race, is I'm the only one that beats Hillary Clinton."
Trump retorted: "Kasich just announced that he wants the people of Indiana to vote for him. Typical politician - can't make a deal work."
The pact means both candidates now believe their only hope of winning lies in keeping the 69-year-old Trump from gaining the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination outright.
If he falls short, Trump runs the risk his delegates, who are bound to vote for him in only the first round of balloting in the party's nominating convention in July, will desert him on subsequent rounds.
Cruz in particular has been maneuvering in state party conventions to have individuals named to delegate slots who, though bound to Trump in the first round, would be sympathetic to Cruz in subsequent rounds of balloting when they are free to vote for whoever they choose.
- 'Desperation' -
"Wow," Trump responded on Twitter. "Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. DESPERATION!"
His opponents, he said in a statement, "are mathematically dead and totally desperate. Their donors & special interest groups are not happy with them. Sad!"
Party heavyweights, alarmed by the prospect of a Trump nomination, have long pressed for a united effort around a single candidate against him.
But Cruz is almost as unpopular with the party's establishment as Trump, and Kasich has refused to bow out even though he has won just a single primary, his home state of Ohio.
Trump has pointed to the bid to stop him as evidence that the primary system is "totally rigged" and that American politics is a "phony, phony business."
- 'Terrible role models' -
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In an election year that has highlighted voter disaffection with politics as usual, a nomination fight at the convention would almost surely be damaging to the party's prospects in November.
The bruising battle is already straining the party and its supporters.
Billionaire Charles Koch, a mega-funder for conservative causes, said in an interview Sunday with ABC's "This Week" the Republican candidates were "terrible role models" and did not see how he could support them, adding it was "possible" Clinton would be a better president.
Meanwhile, Trump is favored to win in the five states that vote Tuesday -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
On the Democratic side, Clinton also is expected to prevail over her rival Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
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