A continued three-way race for the GOP nomination will allow Donald Trump to clinch the top spot during the first ballot of this July's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and if that happens, the New York billionaire will lose the White House to Hillary Clinton in the fall, Mitt Romney is warning.
"If (Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz) are both going at it aggressively until the very end then I think Trump gets it on the first ballot," the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 GOP nominee said in an interview on
"The David Gregory Show" podcast,
reports CNN.
Trump is already defeating both Cruz and Kasich in the polls by double digit leads, but Cruz has the only chance of catching Trump. However, Kasich earlier this month told
CBS News that he hopes to win the nomination by swaying delegates in a contested convention, and has often pointed out that he is the only one of the three candidates who consistently bests Hillary Clinton in polls that measure potential race match-ups.
Romney though, warns in his interview with Gregory that Trump will woo delegates if he falls short of reaching the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination in the first ballot.
"My guess is some delegates might like to fly around on Air Trump or perhaps get a membership to Mar-a-Lago," Romney told the CNN political analyst, making reference to Trump's resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Over the weekend, though, Trump told
ABC News that he could use his "better toys" to persuade delegates, but he accused Cruz of using such tactics, and he won't be doing that because "it's a corrupt system."
Romney, in the podcast, dismissed Trump's complaints about the party's delegate rules, saying they were known more than a year ago, and he's glad the rules are tough.
"After all, these rules are a lot simpler than the rules of foreign affairs or the rules of our economy," Romney said. "If you want to be president, you are going to have to deal with things far more complicated than Republican delegate rules."
The full interview will post on Friday, and will also include a discussion about Romney's faith in public life and about his own father's run for the presidency in 1968.