I think a brokered convention would excite the party as well as the base and the tea party...two groups who dispise Romney. If Romney is the nom the Republican Party is possibly done.
I see two possible outcomes that might save the day.
If Santorum and Gingrich get enough votes between them to prevent Romney from winning on the first ballot, then they can strike a deal between them, presumably with the one having the most votes getting the nod.
If Romney wins, because Santorum and Gingrich have split the conservative votes, then I think we need to abandon the GOP and agree on one candidate that we can write in. That won’t be easy, because the conservatives are a splintered majority. The best choice would be Sarah Palin, but who knows if we can agree, or if she would want to leave the GOP and found a new party.
This would NOT be the usual third party spoiler, if it is managed right. It would be the death of the GOP and the birth of a new party, like what happened 150 years ago. But it’s not easy to bring something like that off. The GOP-e engineered a third party win for their favorite in Alaska, and she actually won with write-in votes. But that was tightly organized and corruptly bought. This is going to have to be a real revolution—and revolutions are not easy to control and unify.
I think it would either need Sarah as the candidate, or Sarah as the organizer, pulling everyone together to unite behind one write-in candidate, maybe Gingrich or Santorum, whichever of the two has the most votes by convention time, with the other as VP.
I think it would energize the whole country. Candidates would be nominated and seconded from the floor and then each candidate would give a 30-minute prime time speech to convince the delegates why they would make a better president than Obama and why they should get the nomination.
It would be a ratings bonanza and the topic of water cooler conversations all over the country.
It would energize me because...dang I don’t want to vote for Mitt Romney.
Palin is the ONLY big wild card in the deck right now.
And, she's the unifying force of the conservative wing of the party.
From the Article: “Republicans have not experienced such a scenario since 1976, when incumbent president Gerald Ford narrowly held off a strong challenge from Ronald Reagan.”
cut to conversation between consultants
ROVE:
How bad do you think it’s gonna be?
ROLLINS:
Pretty goddamn bad. Probably all the conservative Families will line up against us. That’s alright —
this thing’s gotta happen every thirty-five years or so — forty five years — helps to get rid of the bad
blood. Been thirty-five years since the last one. You know you got to stop them at the beginning,
like they should have stopped Reagan in 1980, They should never’ve let him get away with —
that. They were just asking for big trouble. You know, Karl, we was all proud of you —
getting W elected. helping his father, too.
It would certainly make things more interesting. You’d need to get to a second ballot.
I don’t think it would hurt the Republicans. It might generate interest.
Fixed it.