I know this sounds crazy. But I could spin a good conspiracy theory around this.
After all, Michael Steele, the former head of the RNC, was good friends with the Bush family. And he is now on record as saying that he set up all the RNC rules for this election in order to force a brokered convention.
Yes, the former Chair of the party says he secretly planned for a brokered convention, and set up the rules to help make it happen.
Why would he want a brokered convention? What did he see last August when he was formulating the final rules that made him want to create a brokered convention?
Well, he saw that Jeb Bush wasn’t able to join the field. Maybe there was a plan for Jeb to be drafted, but it was way-layed by Rick Perry’s entry and immediate ascendancy. We know Perry isn’t a big favorite of the Bush clan. But his entry made it look like another “alternate to Romney” wasn’t needed.
But then he fell flat. And Now we know that Steele wrote his rules to force a brokered convention — which is the best way he could see to get Bush the nomination.
We know that the rules in Florida cost Romney half his delegates. It also cost half the delegates in New Hampshire, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada — all states Romney was expected to win easily.
So yes, an argument could be made that Steele was trying to keep Romney from getting half the delegates, and to also make Romney look weak, so as to scare the establishment into drafting a candidate at a brokered election.
And, as much as people here hate him, Jeb Bush from that perspective would be one of the few possible choices. He certainly is in well enough with the establishment republicans, and could pull in lots of money for the contest, and has national recognition. But he also was considered relatively conservative during his time in Florida, and the tea party doesn’t hate him.
The alternatives would be worse for conservatives — cobbling together a Romney win in the 3rd or 4th round, or worse, bringing in a Chris Christie or some other “moderate”.
I had hoped Rick PErry would stay in the race, so he’d have the national presence to be the consensus coalition-building candidate in a brokered convention — but that won’t hapepn now.
The best hope for conservatives (I believe the ONLY hope) is for one of the two conservative candidates to actually WIN, or at least get more delegates than Romney, and have the two together control more than half the delegates.
Otherwise, the “superdelegates” are either going to make a deal for some other candidate, or they are going to throw their support to Romney just to get this over and to keep either of the conservatives from winning.
Steele sharpens steel?
It’s too late for anyone to get more delegates than Mitt, even in a one-on-one, short of Mitt being indicted for something. My number-crunching says the only chance to fend off a successful Mitt/Paul alliance is for either Newt or Rick to drop out and the other to perform well in the variations of winner-take-all states, sometimes surpassing 50% to collect all the delegates and successfully beating Romney for a plurality in many of the district contests where that is enough to let them take all the district delegates.
This only makes me more disappointed they got rid of Steele. Seems like the GOP-E wants to take the party back wholesale for the stiff, elite country-clubbers. Steele seemed like a guy from the grass roots who wanted to shake things up and it looks like he did it. To boot him out after the 2010 success seemed unconscionable. If his maneuvering was intended to surreptitiously stop Romney and it succeeds then he’s truly some kind of hero.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/michael-steele-revenge-gop-primary