Donald Trump gains new right-wing rival as Evan McMullin declares independent run for White House

The anti-Trump ferment continues inside the Republican Party amid the launch on Monday of an independent presidential bid by a little-known conservative activist and parallel grassroots efforts to force party officers to draft a replacement nominee.

Evan McMullin, 40, who formerly worked for Goldman Sachs and is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where Donald Trump also studied, was being drafted by a group called "Better for America".

The group, led by Republican consultant Rick Wilson and Florida-based pollster and operative Joel Searby, had been trying for months to find a suitable candidate to make an independent run. Mr McMullin is a former CIA operative who has also advised Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“In a year where Americans have lost faith in the candidates of both major parties, it’s time for a generation of new leadership to step up,” Mr McMullin told ABC News. “It’s never too late to do the right thing, and America deserves much better than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton can offer us. I humbly offer myself as a leader who can give millions of disaffected Americans a conservative choice for president.”

In the meantime, two separate attempts are being revived this week to seek ways to displace Mr Trump or at least change the rules so a candidate of his ilk never emerges again.

Prominent party activists with a group called Delegates Unbound, led by Dane Waters, are to gather this week in Las Vegas to discuss ways of reigniting their campaign to stop Mr Trump, The Independent can reveal.

Additionally, The Washington Post reported a push by another group of rebels called Free the Delegates, that aims to force an emergency meeting of the Republican National Committee, RNC, chaired by Reince Priebus, in the hopes that it would vote on stripping Mr Trump of his status as party nominee for president and finding someone to replace him.

Both things – the McMullin campaign and the new spasm of activity by Free the Delegates – smack of desperation. There is zero indication that the RNC would have any appetite at so late a stage to throw out their party’s presidential nominee.

“NYET!!“ Bruce Ash, an RNC member from Arizona replied after receiving an email over the weekend asking for the special meeting, the Post reported. ”You will not succeed. You are totally self-absorbed. How embarrassing for you. When our nominee defeats Clinton you will try, no doubt, to claim success. If we fail to win your second-guessing and lack of support will not be overlooked.”

Nor is there any obvious path for Mr McMullin. While he apparently gave one TED talk at the London Business School in April on the topic of genocide, he is hardly a household name. He has over the weeks unleashed various caustic tirades against Mr Trump on Twitter and on Facebook. But if that qualified people to run for president the line for the White House would be long indeed.

"What an absolute waste of time and resources," Mr Waters said of the McMullin bid.

As a symbol of lingering dismay within many parts of the Republican Party with Mr Trump and his performance so far, a filing of papers by Mr McMullin could have some potency, however. The conservative flank of the party has long been suspicious of Mr Trump’s bona fides.

On top of that, those who were already worried that Mr Trump would both lose the race against Hillary Clinton and inflict lasting damage on the Republican Party fell into even greater despair in the past couple of weeks as the New York billionaire has made numerous missteps, which in turn has seen him slip dangerously behind in the polls.

Most startling was his decision to pick a fight with the father of an American military hero who had questioned his own grasp of the US Constitution speaking at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia as well as his dithering over whether or not to endorse the re-election bids of House speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain.