Independent candidate Evan McMullin's long-shot bid to have a chance at capturing the White House appears no closer to realization a month into his candidacy, Hot Air reports.
Ever since he launched his bid for the presidency on Aug. 8, it was acknowledged that his only real shot — slim as that might be — of winning was to capture enough electoral votes to deny either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump the 270 necessary to claim victory.
That would send the election into the House of Representatives, where, supposedly, McMullin would be chosen as a unifying candidate.
Amid this most unlikely scenario, the least improbable outcome was supposedly McMullin, who is a Mormon, winning his home state of Utah and its six electoral votes, aided by the support of many Mormons who usually vote Republican, but are wavering due to their disgust at Trump.
But as Hot Air points out, a month into his campaign, McMullin is receiving only 9 percent of the vote there in opinion polls, well behind Trump at 39 percent.
To make matters worse, most of the votes McMullin has picked up have been at the expense not of Trump, who was at 37 percent before McMullian entered the race, but of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or those surveyed who said "don't know" or "other."
But that has not stopped the McMullin campaign from remaining optimistic, as reflected in a memorandum they sent out to explain their goals.
"Each time it seemed the great American experiment was on the ropes, someone stepped up. In this moment, that someone is Evan McMullin," the memo reads.
The optimism remains despite the fact that McMullin, a former CIA officer who was also chief policy adviser for the House Republican Conference, has already missed the presidential ballot in such major states as Texas, California and New York and is not even listed as a choice when national pollsters ask the voters who they support, even those that do include Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
The memo presses for a write-in support of mammoth proportions and lists numerous cases where this worked, although none of them on the national level.
The memo also tries to reason with those who don't really think the whole idea will work, appealing to their place in history.
"We're positioned to give voters a safe haven in the era of Trump, to rescue conservatism from the wreckage of Trumpism, and to give Republican donors, candidates and activists a moral and smart political choice," the memo said.
"Every person in the political process will be judged after this election and for the foreseeable future based where they stood with Donald Trump."
Politico reports that McMullin has been reaching out to several top Republican operatives who oppose Trump to get more involved in the campaign, including former Mitt Romney deputy campaign manager Katie Packer, who praised him as the only true conservative in the race and for his energy in giving it a try.
But perhaps showing just how long shot the McMullin candidacy is, even Packer said she was reluctant to support him, because he is not running as a Republican, and that's how she identifies herself.
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