The Republican Party is now facing the threat of a hostile takeover. Donald Trump is not a conservative, he is not a Republican; he is not even a Democrat. Donald Trump is a radical demagogue who has chosen to invoke the tribal instinct to mobilize mob support behind an agenda of socialist policy and unlimited government. In other words, he fits the precise political definition of a national socialist. He is also an open admirer and apologist for Vladimir Putin, America’s number one enemy worldwide. His seizure of the GOP presidential nomination must be prevented.

How can Trump be stopped? So long as the votes of the rational electorate are scattered among several alternative candidates, Trump’s advantage will remain overwhelming. Until the New Hampshire primary, there was some hope that one of the legitimate Republican contenders would clear the field early, allowing a unified party to stop the intruder. This hope has now faded.

But there is a way to stop Trump. To see it, we need to look to France.

In the first round of the French regional elections held December 6, Marine Le Pen’s extremist Putin-allied National Front took first place, leaving the mainstream Gaullist and Socialist parties well behind. The stage seemed set for a National Front seizure of power across most of France. But rising to the threat, the Gaullists and Socialists put their rivalries aside, and split the various regions between them, with each endorsing the candidates put forth by the other in their respective chosen region. As a result, the National Front was totally shut out in the second round, and did not take a single region. This is what the Republican contenders now need to do to Trump.

On March 1, the GOP will hold its “Super Tuesday” group of primaries, with 603 delegates from 12 states, including Alabama (50), Alaska (28), Arkansas (40), Colorado (37), Georgia (76), Massachusetts (42), Minnesota (38), Oklahoma (43), Tennessee (29), Texas (155), Vermont (16), and Virginia (49) up for grabs. What needs to be done is for the Republican candidates to come to an agreement as to who will take responsibility for defending each state from Trump, with the rest withdrawing from contention there.

Ideally such a division of states would be made not just based on equity of targeted delegates, but with a mind towards which candidate would be best equipped to defeat Trump in each location. So for example, Kasich might be a good candidate for Massachusetts and Vermont, and perhaps Minnesota, so he could be given those states (with 96 total delegates), to handle. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is clearly the man for Texas and Oklahoma (198 total delegates). Bush would do well in the military-friendly states of Georgia, Virginia, and Alabama (175 total), leaving Rubio to defend Tennessee, Arkansas, Colorado, and Alaska (for a total of 134).

It may be observed that the division of states outlined above, or any other that might be proposed, would not be strictly fair, in the sense that all candidates would not have an equal opportunity to take delegates, but that should not be a central concern. Those with a larger number of delegates available to win would also face a stiffer fight. Regardless, under the above plan, no one Republican candidate would be able to steamroll the others. But if something like this is not done, there is every chance that Trump will be able to steamroll the lot.

Trump has a weakness: he has no surrogates. His campaign relies on his own star power, and where he is not present, he has very little. It will be quite difficult for him to effectively campaign across 12 states, matched up against opponents each of whom only needs to concentrate on a few. On the other hand, if all of his opponents spread themselves thin in the same way, and worse yet, continue to fire primarily on each other in fratricidal effort to seize the second-best slot, they could all end up being -- as Trump will surely contemptuously describe them -- losers.

It may be too much to expect a formal pact of the sort described here to be reached between the campaigns, but an informal agreement for each to stick to their best turf and direct all fire against Trump rather than each other is surely possible. A powerful demagogue is the worst enemy any democracy can have. Right now one is posing a threat to ours. If the Republican candidates must compete, let them compete for the honor of who can do the most to defend it. The winner of that contest will deserve the presidency.

Robert Zubrin is president of Pioneer Energy of Lakewood, Colo., and the author of Energy Victory. The paperback edition of his latest book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, was recently published by Encounter Books.