--- title: Inside the Republican Plan to Stop Donald Trump description: "They’re building the plane while trying flying it." canonical: https://time.com/4245673/donald-trump-republican-plan-stop/ author: Zeke Miller article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-02T22:34:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-05T08:49:33.695Z article:section: Politics og:title: Inside the Republican Plan to Stop Trump og:description: "They’re building the plane while trying flying it." og:url: https://time.com/4245673/donald-trump-republican-plan-stop/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40036bcf8a90ab72/69888004bc6cfc6dff3dbfc2/donald-trump7.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump speaks to the media at his Mar-A-Lago Club on Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016 in Palm Beach, Florida. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Inside the Republican Plan to Stop Trump twitter:description: "They’re building the plane while trying flying it." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40036bcf8a90ab72/69888004bc6cfc6dff3dbfc2/donald-trump7.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Inside the Republican Plan to Stop Trump > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=403d9f81-b2a7-45ad-b85c-97efbe2f63b7&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Why It's So Hard to Attack Trump [Watch (HLS stream): Why It's So Hard to Attack Trump](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/X3BpgQ9x.m3u8) (3:13)  _Published 2016-03-02. Now, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are attempting to beat him at his own game—but will any attacks against Trump actually stick?_ by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Mar 2, 2016 10:34 PM UTC by [Zeke Miller](https://time.com/author/zeke-j-miller/) ## Zeke Miller Mar 2, 2016 10:34 PM UTC For months Republican donors and candidates had been squeamish about taking on Donald Trump, convinced he’d fade out or simply afraid of the blowback from the bombastic billionaire. Now with Trump on the cusp of securing the nomination, the GOP is gearing up to bankroll a desperate effort to stop him. The loosely-coordinated anti-Trump efforts are attempting to get off the ground, uncover potentially damning research, and deploy it on television and online all before March 15, the date on which Trump stands to make a break-out in winner-take-all contests if his momentum isn’t stalled. It’s a tall order, with campaign operatives seeking to condense months of planning and strategy into days. “They’re building the plane while trying flying it,” said one supportive, but skeptical GOP operative. While candidates and outside groups have tried to attack Trump before, the new efforts will be defined by their attacks not on Trump’s hodgepodge policies—which voters have been willing to overlook—rather his personal and professional failings. “What has happened in the past in the general GOP critique of Trump is a lot of it was rehashing similar arguments that have been out there,” Tim Miller, the spokesman for Our Principles PAC told TIME. “We have to play his game. We’re looking for what’s salacious.” Miller said his group’s attacks on Trump will seek to undermine the three legs propping up Trump’s campaign: the notions that he speaks the truth, that he’s a successful businessman, and that he can beat Hillary Clinton. “Hillary could be in a jail cell and she’d beat Donald Trump in a landslide,” Miller said. “The takeaway from \[Super Tuesday\] is that in many states over half of the electorate said they’d be unhappy with Donald trump as the nominee.” Our Principles PAC has already made a seven-figure television ad buy in Illinois, Michigan, and Florida with an [ad criticizing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnCGwdyiIuA&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop) Trump University, the defunct education program currently embroiled in a fraud suit. Meanwhile Club for Growth Action, is deploying $1.5 million to [attack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDPa6D4bO48&feature=youtu.be) Trump in Florida on his business bankruptcies and use of eminent domain. The new spending is on top of a campaign by the conservative group American Future Fund that is running ads featuring former customers of Trump University. The attacks come as Trump’s rivals are taking turns hitting him. Peppering his stump speech with broadsides at the front-runner Sunday evening in Roanoke, Va., Marco Rubio called Trump a hypocrite, accused him of weakness, and even questioned his manhood. “You know what they say about men with small hands,” Rubio said, complete with a pregnant pause. “You can’t trust ‘em.” “Any attacks have to be led by the candidates,” Former Mitt Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said. “You can’t outsource your courage. These other attacks can reinforce your points or even open up new ones, but they have to be led by the candidates.” Many Republican operatives are livid at the media—particularly cable news—who they argue have become beholden to Trump for record political ratings. “It’s time for the media to do their job and seriously vet Donald Trump,” said Katie Packer, the former Romney aide who founded Our Principles PAC . But the Trump show has become a force unto itself, drawing the equivalent of millions of dollars in free airtime every time he speaks to the press. That’s why the GOP effort is now trying to play off Trump’s playbook of name-calling and insults, in hopes claiming a piece of the earned media pie. Stevens brushed off the notion that the attacks have only strengthened Trump, saying no candidate until Rubio last week has seriously tried to weaken him. (Jeb Bush’s criticism of the front-runner was designed to show toughness and boost his own poll numbers, rather than peel off Trump supporters.) “Trump has been in a race where he’s been fighting in a race where none of the other candidate were fighting him, so of course he was doing well,” Stevens said. Now he says the candidates have to start fighting Trump, and “never stop fighting.” “It’s going to take a sustained paid media campaign,” said Packer. “It’s going to take the candidates taking him on, which I do think is happening now finally.” But it remains to be seen whether it was too late. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Everybody knows what they're getting in Donald Trump. You've seen him on TV and interviews, so it's hard to attack him like you would a conventional politician because everybody has heard of him already. And it's pretty hard to reset that with a single jibe. [ MUSIC ] Over the next couple of weeks we're going to see all of these candidates and outsiders launching massive last ditch effort to stop Donald Trump, before the March 15th winner take all primary's. It' really too soon to tell if this will work, but ultimately It's now or never. When Donald Trump first started running a lot of the other candidates didn't really take him seriously, and so they didn't bother attacking him. They were much more concerned with fighting each other for the particular spot, whether it be the establishment or the conservative spot. There it is, the memorized twenty five second speech. Donald Trump is the master of insults and it's hard to beat him at his own game. When Mexico sends it's people. They're bringing drugs. Their rapists and some I assume are good people. And he has a particular gift at figuring out what is the thing that is going to most bother you. Low energy individual. So if you are going up against Trump they have to figure out. How to insult him in an equally devastating way and I don't know that the attacks that we've heard so far are actually going to work. Let me ask for a full length mirror. Maybe to make sure his pants weren't wet. I don't know. Then He's not a politician so there's not a record of votes that he took or bills that he sponsored or actions that he took. So a lot of that just becomes like well, yeah, I said that one time and now I'm saying this. And so people don't mind. Would never do that. [ LAUGH ] Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have spoken up a lot more directly going after him. He's not faced some of these attacks. So some of them we just don't know whether they will work or not. Or it's possible that they may work but they could turn out to be more useful to Democrats down the road. I think you already see Clinton's campaign portraying Trump as the divider and Hillary is the Uniter . >> America never stopped being great we have to make America whole. I was told by the campaign that they felt that the republican field had tried to define Trump a little too late and if they would not make the same mistake I don't think you're going to see Hillary herself attacking Trump. I think you're gonna see Bill Clinton and her surrogate certainly, attacking Trump. She wants to remain a very positive messenger. Almost in a Ronald Reagan kind of sense, the optimism of morning in America. Today is more love and kindness. Whereas, they would portray Donald Trump as night in America. The thing though is that Trump is wining the Republican primaries based largely off of white support and when it comes to general election, given all the constituencies that he's offended, will he still have the same power. Will he still be able to win, and will any of these attacks start to stick? And I think the Clinton campaign is betting on that they will. 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