You overlook one other scenario. That is Rick/Newt combined get more delegates than Romney. In that scenario, the one behind, currently Newt, would throw his support behind Rick (or vice versa). Now when it comes to the 2nd ballot, why would it have to be Mitt? There would be a very good argument to say that Mitt is toast. He outspent his rivals and couldn’t close the deal. And if he couldn’t close the deal with his money advantage in the primary, he won’t stand a chance against Obama where he won’t have the same advantages. Now that is just pointing out the obvious weakness in Romney. And considering how much the guy at the top of the ticket affects races nationwide, why wouldn’t the establishment want to dump Mittens? And on top of that, you will have the Conservative wing screaming as loud as they can that it must not be Mitt. All in all unless Mitt gets over 50% of the delegates I don’t see any good reason he should be the nominee. He is doing rather poorly considering he saturates the airwaves against his rivals while they can’t fight back.
In this sense, Rick seems like a much stronger candidate. “Hey guys look at me. I almost won a bunch of states spending 1/6 the money Mitt did.” Or Newt, depending who comes out on top.
Of course the last 4 brokered conventions the republicans had, they lost the general election. Luckily, this time around the incumbent is weak.
“You overlook one other scenario. That is Rick/Newt combined get more delegates than Romney. “
You are right, if they join forces it does become easier. They probably still wouldn’t get the nomination outright (they still need 80% of the hard bound delegates from here on out to do that) but they only need to outperform Romney by about 11 points to at least have a lead over him.
Even then though it will be an uphill challenge for the simple reason that the brokers dont play nice and never like the conservative candidate. In 1952, the brokers actually stole delegates from Taft to give to RINO Ike (he was literally a RINO as he wasnt sure which party to even join not that long before 1952). In 1976, the MS delegation betrayed Reagan despite the fact that it was Reagan country. In 1980, the brokers were pushing for a Reagan-Ford co-Presidency, which would have been a disaster.
Not gonna happen, unfortunately.
Rick's not gonna drop out. Why should he? He's out-polling Newt pretty much everywhere.
Newt's not gonna drop out. He doesn't seem the type to want to take the backseat to anyone.
So they'll both continue splitting the conservative vote. At close of businessTuesday, March 13, Romney will have a much bigger portion of the 90 Mississippi/Alabama delegates in his column than he would have had facing a single conservative, and the delegate math will make it even more unlikely that Romney will be stopped.