Posted on 04/02/2016 6:26:12 AM PDT by raptor22
On the heels of a Marquette University poll showing Sen. Ted Cruz taking a 10-point lead in Wisconsin, Donald Trump once again whined on Wednesday that the “establishment” is trying to take the nomination away from him, citing the Louisiana delegate allocation which gave Cruz more delegates even though Trump got more votes. as Exhibit A. As Breitbart News reported:
With less than a week to go until the Wisconsin primary, Trump came out swinging -- against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), against the Establishment lining up behind Cruz in order to keep Trump below 1,237 delegates so they can broker it in Cleveland, and against Cruz’s supporter Governor Scott Walker.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Why wait?
Of course it has a bearing. If Trump fails to reach 1,237 delegates, the number of states won and votes receive will have a bearing on the delegates who must then decide who is the nominee.
To date, Trump has won twice as many states as Cruz and more than 2 million votes received than Cruz. If the primary process has any meaning at all, these are factors that will and must be considered if the GOP wants to win in November.
So far, 37% of the voters have cast their votes for Trump and 27% for Cruz. Trump has received 7,863,052 votes and Cruz 5,782,142 (including 1.2 million in Texas).
Kasich has received 13% of the votes for a total of 2,822,210 votes.
As to how many voted for Trump, that has zero bearing on the convention. 2/3rds of Primary voters DID NOT vote for Trump. Its delegates, not votes.
Trump has 752 delegates and Cruz has 463. 73% of the primary voters did not vote for Cruz compared to the 63% who did not vote for Trump.
Kasich can use the same argument you did against Cruz or so could Jeb or Marco or Paul Ryan. Kasich can say that almost three quarters of the primary voters did not vote for Cruz and that Cruz has only received 19% of the total delegates awarded to date. Trump has received 30% of the delegates so far.
Bottom line: If we go to a contested convention, votes and states won will have a bearing on who gets the nomination. Preventing the person who has been the front-runner since July and has received the most delegates and votes from the nomination will have repercussions in November.
If the situation were reversed and Cruz had more delegates and votes, I would support Cruz for the nomination even as a Trump supporter. Anyone who puts themselves thru this grinding process should be rewarded by the actual results and not have it decided in back rooms.
HOPE and CHANGE..... where have we heard that before?
==
Huh?
>>Maybe Trump wont win, but the Establishment isn’t going to let Cruz win either.<<
You guys keep saying that, that Cruz will be passed over if Trump doesn’t make it on the first ballot, but so far I’ve seen absolutely no analysis of how that happens other than “they just will!”
Despite the obvious division in here between rabid Trump and rabid Cruz supporters, most Trump voters will have very little trouble switching their support to Cruz in the general election. Even in here you see many Trump supporters saying things along the lines of “well, my second choice is Cruz,” or “I like Cruz but I’m voting for Trump because...” Out in the real world of the less-engaged voters, a switch to Cruz will be both an easy and a logical choice when the time comes.
So, if Trump loses on the first ballot the majority of Trump delegates are very likely to switch to Cruz because that’s the next logical choice of a Trump voter. That move will result in a candidate that the majority of GOP voters can support including, as I said, the vast majority of Trump voters.
Doing otherwise, and nominating Kasich, or someone else not even running, will alienate not only the Trump voters, but also most of the Cruz voters, because there simply isn’t a third choice that will satisfy both groups of voters. To do so will obviously be not only a suicidal move, but a fundamentally stupid move by the GOP. That isn’t going to happen no matter how stupid/suicidal Trump supporters think the GOP establishment is. Cruz will easily win if it goes to a second ballot, and given the way things have been going for Trump the past week or two, a second ballot is probable.
As a Trump supporter, why should I switch to someone who received far less delegates and votes and states won? You assume that Trump supporters will not see this as being manifestly unfair and disenfrancisement. If the opposite were the case and Cruz had the most delegates and votes, do you believe the majority of the Cruz delegates will switch to Trump?
More importantly than the delegates, what will the Trump voters do in November if they believe that the nomination was stolen from Trump, the clear front-runner? What do you think Trump will do if this happens? Do you think he will support Cruz or whatever "fresh face" the GOPe digs up?
>>Looking forward to you getting the ZOT when Trump is confirmed.<<
Interesting post. So that’s what will happen if we nominate our own narcissistic autocrat? Everyone who didn’t agree with you deserves the ZOT?
How American of you...
The GOPe are panicking because people are waking up and becoming disgusted watching the Bush, Romney, Rove, Soros approved cabal attempt to obtain something through deception, deceit, duplicity, deviousness, underhandedness, subterfuge and chicanery what the people did not choose to give them directly,
Cruz will also be thrown under the bus as soon as they derail the Trump train,
But Cruz says Kasich should get out because he has no path to 1237.
>>As a Trump supporter, why should I switch to someone who received far less delegates and votes and states won?<<
Well, the obvious answer is that he would have been nominated at the GOP convention by a majority of the delegates. The more pertinent question is “Will you support Cruz if nominated?”
Yes, I assume that the vast majority of Trump voters (not rabid supporters now, but voters) will easily switch to Cruz.
As for Cruz voters switching to Trump in a similar situation, sure, many of them would. Many people in here have already said that they like Cruz, but have switched to Trump. That said, a large portion of Cruz “voters” will never vote for Trump for the simple reason that they can’t stomach Trump’s crude behavior. That is manifestly clear from the favorable/unfavorable polling, especially with women.
You assume that the average voter will view the nomination as stolen from Trump. The average voter won’t even be watching what is likely to be an electrifying event this year, the convention itself. They really won’t give a hoot about how the nomination was achieved. Most of them, after all, never bothered to even vote in the primaries. You’re projecting your potential anger onto the average voter. In fact, once it’s Cruz vs. Hillary, the clear difference in the choice will have most conservatives as well as people fed up with DC lining up to support Cruz.
As for what Trump himself does if he loses the nomination, I’m absolutely certain of one thing. It will make for good television. Beyond that, I doubt much will come of it. He’s obviously unprepared to lead the country, and by now I suspect that even he has realized that fact. He might also be realizing that failing to withdraw with grace after a good fight might damage his name, and a good part of his business empire is tied to that name and the respect associated with it.
Ok. Fair enough.
“What Cruz doesn’t know is that if he is successful in blocking Trump, these so-called new backers are going to throw him under the bus for someone they can control.”
It is why the eGOP has been putting out the talking point that in the last 10 contested conventions 7 times they have selected someone that wasn’t even running.
>>But Cruz says Kasich should get out because he has no path to 1237.<<j
Maybe Cruz did say exactly that, but I doubt it. The main reason for Kasich to withdraw is to finally get this down to a two-man race so we can find out if GOP voters, given the choice of Trump vs. Cruz, continue to choose Trump. If they do, that settles the matter, because Trump will continue to win the “winner take all” states and all their delegates.
But as things stand, Trump wins those delegates with as little as 34% of the vote even if he would lose them in a two-man race, and his terrible favorable/unfavorable standing makes it quite likely that he would continue to get less than 50% of the vote in a two-man race meaning, of course, that Cruz would win those contests.
Of course, it’s also possible that Kasich is helping Cruz by taking delegates from Trump that Cruz wouldn’t be able to get on his own. Ohio was a good example of that, and the Madison area delegates in WI might also be won by Kasich instead of Trump although it’s possible Cruz would win them anyway if Kasich weren’t on the ballot in WI.
Amen. Too many betrayals. One should have been too many.
I guess I'm a weird one because his crudity is not the problem for me. It's his self-divinity that's the problem.
“What Cruz doesn’t know is that if he is successful in blocking Trump, these so-called new backers are going to throw him under the bus for someone they can control.”
If he doesn’t realize that he’s seriously in denial- maybe he’s betting that he can pick up enough Trump delegates on the second or third ballot to win.
What’s going to happen is that he will experience the full force of the opposition that is now aimed at defeating Trump.
UPSET DELEGATES ALL AROUND! Stop the steal! @scottienhughes pic.twitter.com/4xH7ZkHCHh— TNforTRUMP (@tnfortrump) April 2, 2016
You’re not supposed to expose sloppy logic that way. It embarrasses the trolls.
That’s probably true, but it also makes it easier to digest the fact that someone other than Trump might be nominated if Trump fails to either win 1237 delegates or to convince unbound ones to join him to reach that number.
A vocal group in here, for instance, are claiming that just because Trump got the most votes in primary states he deserves the nomination, delegate count be damned. This recent “talking point” serves to counter that and bring people back to the reality of the situation, i.e., that a majority of the delegates will select the nominee, not a plurality of the voters.
I’m hardly alone in not wanting Trump to be the nominee, but if he gets the delegates required, he’ll be the nominee and I won’t be arguing that we should instead go by his polling against Hillary or some other metric more favorable to my position. By the same token, if he fails to become the nominee by the rules, his supporters should be willing accept that instead of advocating new rules favorable to Trump. Whether any of us vote for the eventual nominee in November is a separate issue.
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