NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {E} ven after Mitt Romney had all but secured the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, he had to deal with a couple of bitter-enders who refused to drop out of the race.

Rick Santorum, whom Romney described in his private journal as “sanctimonious, severe and strange,” wanted to negotiate the terms of his withdrawal. As the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins recounts in his recent biography Romney: A Reckoning, the Romney campaign discussed “what Romney could ‘offer’ him to drop out and make an endorsement” — maybe help him raise money to pay off his campaign debts or consider him for vice president or a cabinet post.

With his leverage almost “evaporated,” Santorum called Romney’s campaign and made one more request: that he be given a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention to be held in Tampa. Romney refused. But the next day Santorum was out.

In 2012, winnowing the field was mostly a formality. Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich were going to bow out eventually anyway. But in 2023, distilling the GOP field is absolutely crucial for those opposed to Donald Trump’s once again becoming the nominee.

Trump is still dominating a split field; in the latest RealClearPolitics averages, in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, he is up by at least 30 percentage points on his closest competitor. This is why recent calls for candidates to drop out of the race have become more prevalent (including from yours truly, about a month ago). If Trump continues to face a fractured opposition, he will walk to the nomination without a bead of sweat disturbing his spray tan.

That is why Nikki Haley should start cutting deals to get people out of the race. Despite polling slightly behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa (but making up ground quickly), Haley has now pulled ahead of DeSantis in New Hampshire and her native South Carolina. Now second behind Trump for the nomination, she should start flexing her negotiating muscle to make a one-on-one race closer to reality.

Her state-mate, Senator Tim Scott, did the right thing and ended his somnambulant campaign earlier this week. Now Haley needs to begin dangling the plum of “Ambassador Doug Burgum.” “Attorney General Chris Christie” may have an enticing ring to it.

Of course, for Haley to muscle DeSantis out of the race is unlikely, given his status as the only other “serious” candidate in the field. But if the Florida governor, who is in danger of being tossed into the bin of history like a Taylor Swift ex-boyfriend, experiences three straight third-place finishes to kick off the primary season, he may soon find himself at the negotiating table.

(It goes without saying that Vivek Ramaswamy, whose policies appear to be influenced heavily by late-night bong rips, would not receive any position within a Haley administration. Typically, when another candidate deems you “scum,” that is a signal that a “team of rivals” situation is not on the horizon.)

It is not as if we don’t have a recent example of a party getting its business in order to thwart an extremist front-runner. In the span of six days in March 2020, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg all dropped out of the Democratic primary. These surrenders helped Democrats swing support to Joe Biden and killed the nomination hopes of socialist Bernie Sanders, who almost certainly would have lost to Trump.

According to reports, Buttigieg spent the night before his withdrawal talking to former president Barack Obama, who told the South Bend mayor he had “considerable leverage at the moment and should think about how best to use it.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Buttigieg became Biden’s secretary of transportation, where he has proposed $1 billion in spending to produce “racial equity in roads.”

Nevertheless, the critics of the “everyone needs to get out except Haley or DeSantis” gambit make a valid point: When the field shrinks, there is no guarantee Haley will pick up the departed candidates’ votes. According to a Des Moines Register analysis, Trump, Haley, and DeSantis will effectively split the votes left on the table by Tim Scott’s exit. So a smaller field could actually expand the front-runner’s lead.

But campaigns aren’t simply a game of math. If candidates drop out and Haley picks up most of their votes, it’s not “15 percent plus 5 percent equals 20,” it’s “Oh, crap, Nikki Haley has momentum and looks more like a winner.” This draws more media attention and votes: The more you look like a winner, the more likely people will reward you for doing so.

And it’s true that the race isn’t likely to swing wildly in any direction once the single-digit candidates drop out. Christie’s 3 percent or the 1 percent being pulled by Burgum or Asa Hutchinson isn’t going to suddenly make the difference against Trump. But their departure would free up more time for Haley to speak at debates (assuming any of them manage to qualify) and break loose some fundraising that had been promised to other candidates. Remember when Oracle’s Larry Ellison promised to spend $30 million to help Tim Scott? That money now needs a safe home.

Further, polls have shown 70 percent of Americans don’t want a Trump vs. Biden rematch in 2024. The push for a fresh face in the race is overwhelming — you couldn’t get that kind of support for handing out Ozempic for free. With those kinds of numbers, who knows who will show up to prevent a 2020 rematch?

Consider former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s formulation that in matters of national security there are “known knowns,” there are “known unknowns,” and there are “unknown unknowns” — the things we don’t know that we don’t know.

Here is a known known: If the field isn’t down to one candidate versus Trump very soon, a man facing 91 felony counts will be the nominee of a major political party in America. A man who very recently invoked authoritarian catchphrases in threatening, if reelected, to “root out” the “vermin” in America.

But there is also a known unknown. It is true, even if the party were to quickly consolidate around Haley, who polls in crucial states have shown is far more electable in the general than Trump, that the former president might still win the nomination.

But he might not. Perhaps New York State strips him of all his businesses and he suddenly looks like a penniless loser instead of the tough boss people saw on Celebrity Apprentice. Perhaps people exposed to his increasingly deranged comments again on a daily basis finally can’t stomach it. Or maybe he suffers a health incident.

But the unknown unknowns in 2024 are where things get truly frightening. Let’s say Trump beats Biden. We don’t know whether Trump will be sent to prison, or how his supporters would react to a sitting president being thrown behind bars. At that point, democracy could completely unravel, with large portions of the country choosing to disobey laws and norms.

The candidate-consolidation plan may still be a long shot, but it is the only plan that holds the potential of a satisfying ending for traditional conservatives. Behind Door No. 1 is a Joe Biden reelection in which Kamala Harris calls the White House twice a day to check on the ancient president’s pulse. Behind Door No. 2 is an America that turns into an anarchic day care full of armed toddlers who have been fed Red Bulls and Skittles for breakfast and lunch.

But right now, Republican primary voters must choose Door No. 3: the one that allows for conservative governance led by someone other than Trump. That door is only just cracked open, but if the field doesn’t consolidate quickly, it will soon be bolted shut.