I saw enough trouble at our local county caucus in Missouri to see firsthand what a brokered convention on a national level would look like — in a county where Santorum won our primary by a huge majority, the Romney people won a majority of the delegates to our district convention because the Santorum people were split and the Ron Paul people managed to divide the vote between moderate Santorum supporters, including most of the county party leadership, and more radical people who had a lot in common with Ron Paul. In St. Charles County, things got so bad that the police were called and the caucus was shut down. The end result is the way delegates voted may have had little to do with the preferences of the people who elected them.
Gingrich is a student of history. He knew what he was talking about when he reminded people of Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood's failed bid to become the 1920 Republican nominee. I knew about that uproar long ago because I live outside Fort Leonard Wood and I do my research, but Gingrich was presumably preparing people to understand just what kind of a knock-down drag-out fight a brokered convention would look like.
The chaos at the Reform Party convention with Pat Buchanan is the only parallel we have had in modern politics, and that wasn't even close to what a brokered Republican Party (or for that matter, Democratic Party) convention would be like. The Reform Party convention was a circus sideshow that people knew meant very little. To have that kind of chaos at a major party convention would be a very different thing.
There are reasons why the Democrats pushed so hard to get Obama enough superdelegates to prevent a 2008 brokered convention. The Democrats avoided the debacle of a brokered convention — barely — and Republican leaders have understandable reasons for trying to prevent that now.
I do believe Newt and Romney are working the delegates and began doing so some time ago....as well as those who appoint those delegates. Sanatorium simply doesn't have the manpower nor connections strong enough to do so. Especially since he was the diversion away from Newt.
Am still hopeful Newt and Sanatorium can remain in this long enough to get to convention....the delegate card have not yet been played....candidates can fight the bound and unbound distribution of candidates as well.
Although I'd love to see Sanatorium drop out and give Newt the reins to take this all the way to convention. Ricks had his two man race and has failed thus far to stop Romney. So he cannot blame Newt any longer for his failures.