title:  GOP Billionaires Panic, Conference Call Begs For Money To Stop Trump
text: Republican donors are in a panic over the growing surge of conservative votes for Donald Trump in the Republican primary process. In reaction to his delegate lead and expected success on Super Tuesday, a cabal of high-dollar Republican donors had a conference call with one goal in mind: Stop Trump.Meg Whitman, Todd Ricketts and Paul Singer, among others, all took part in the call with about 50 people, urging them to fund Our Principles PAC, which was funded largely by a member of the Ricketts family, and which started airing ads in Iowa before the caucuses to try to stop Mr. Trump. The state is the only one that Mr. Trump has not won of the first four nominating contests. There are other entities looking to thwart Mr. Trump, but the call was primarily about Our Principles PAC, according to two participants, who asked not to be identified in order to talk about a private discussion.The call participants are largely previous bankrollers of Republican campaigns that were knocked out by Trump and his nativist pro-white campaign.But the New York Times reports that the effort to funnel campaign cash into an anti-Trump PAC still hasn t decided on a consensus anti-Trump candidate. The failure to decide on Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or even John Kasich as the straight-up alternative to the reality TV star has split the  anti  vote and allowed Trump to continue to romp through the process.Putting money in a largely unregulated super PAC is no silver bullet either. Trump has already survived the well-funded Right to Rise super PAC, who backed Jeb Bush, which oddly spent much of its campaign war chest on anti-Rubio efforts, rather than targeting Trump.The panic call comes as a new CNN poll shows Trump losing badly to both Democratic candidates. He is 8% below Hillary Clinton and 17% behind Bernie Sanders.Featured image via Flickr