Spotlight: Anti-Trump Republicans' desperate attempts to find GOP savior in 2016 White House race

Less than a week after campaigning with Republican presidential candidate John Kasich, who is also governor of Ohio, a Midwest U.S. state which held its primary on March 15, former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney switched sides and joined Texas Senator Ted Cruz's team in Utah, telling voters there that a vote for Kasich was worse than wasted.

"I like Governor John Kasich. I have campaigned with him," said Romney, who was the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, in a statement posted to Facebook on March 18. "But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail."

Unlike former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who endorsed Cruz's 2016 White House bid against Donald Trump early this month, Romney aides and allies made it crystal-clear that Romney is not endorsing Cruz.

"It is part of his (Romney) effort to unite the Republican Party around an alternative to Mr. Trump," a New York Times report quoted Romney's allies as saying.

As the once crowded GOP pack for the White House race has dwindled to a trio -- New York real estate developer Donald Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, Cruz, a first-term senator who had for long built his reputation as a marginalized ideological purist as well as his relentless bashing of GOP elites, is now suddenly regarded by previous critics within the party as the party's savior.

Long before his anti-establishment presidential campaign began 12 months ago, Cruz had few friends on Capitol Hill and was viewed by congressional Republicans as rigid ideologue who preferred to act alone to push forward right-wing agendas at the cost of shutting down the government.

The aversion to Cruz in Washington has been summed up by a well-known joke here that goes like this: the best way for U.S. President Barack Obama to generate eight vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court would be to nominate Cruz to the body.

As the bellicose GOP front-runner Trump continued strides toward securing nomination of the Republican Party, GOP elites have become obvious in their desperate attempts to stop Trump from being nominated -- they want anyone but Trump -- and begun turning to the exact man they had loathed previously and still dislike now.

Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina has best illustrated the GOP elites' growing sense of desperation with his recent endorsement of Cruz, which has astonished many a people.

Just about a month ago, Graham, who had previously endorsed Jeb Bush before the latter bowed out of the presidential race, jokingly explained how GOP establishment had hated Cruz by saying that "if you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." Jeb Bush announced his decision to suspend his White House campaign on Feb. 20 after repeated rejection by voters and frustrating setbacks throughout 2016 presidential race.

Also speaking at a news conference on Capitol Hill in January, Graham compared the choice between Trump and Cruz "like being shot or poisoned."

However, with the only GOP establishment candidate Kasich being a long shot to win the party nomination, Graham, who recently offered to help raise money for Cruz's campaign, appeared to have made up his mind to choose poison.

"Ted Cruz, in my view, is a real Republican who I often disagree with," said Graham in a recent interview with CBS News. "I'm supporting Ted because I think he's the best alternative to Donald Trump."

It seems that the newly found affection towards Cruz among GOP elites has nothing to do with Cruz's electability, as suggested by Graham in his recent interview with CBS.

While speaking on the nationally broadcasted interview on March 20, Graham appealed to Kasich to drop out after acknowledging that the Ohio governor was "the most electable."

"John, if I thought you could win, I'd be behind you because you are the most electable candidate," said Graham. "Work with Ted to deny Trump (of) 1,237 (delegates required to win nomination). If you're not willing to work with Ted, you're hurting the cause."

Currently, Ted Cruz has won support of 463 delegates, and Trump has got the support of 738 delegates, while Kasich has only garnered favor of 143 delegates. Cruz's chance of actually winning the nomination appears slim as the requirement for securing a GOP nomination is to get the support of 1,237 delegates.

In order to win the nomination, Cruz would need to win about 90 percent of the remaining 848 delegates while Trump would need only 59 percent.

Anti-Trump Republicans, however, have suggested that if Cruz could keep Trump a big margin short of 1,237 delegates, there might still be a chance to snatch the nomination from the New York billionaire real estate developer at a contested convention scheduled to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, in July. Endit