Posted on 01/24/2016 3:49:17 PM PST by brothers4thID
The conventional wisdom about Republican presidential nominations goes something like this: Either (1) a single candidate wins Iowa and New Hampshire, then sweeps the rest of the field; or (2) the winner in Iowa fails to take New Hampshire, and we wait a few weeks for South Carolina and Nevada to figure out who the nominee will be. Either way, the whole thing wraps up early, and the later contests do not matter.
These scenarios have played out, though, when the top candidates have been generally acceptable to the majority of Republicans. Under those circumstances, letting Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada sort out the candidates makes sense: The rest of the party will endorse that selection.
But the two candidates at the top of the heap right now -- Donald Trump and Ted Cruz --leave a significant swath of the Republican party (if not the voters, then at least the politicians, donors, and consultants who dominate American politics) feeling quite cold. This could mean a lengthy nomination battle that stretches all the way to the California primary in June.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Perhaps, in a nutshell, the nomination process selected by the GOP is the problem.
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The fact that so many red States still have open primaries doesn’t help, either. Lots of Dems cast votes for the weak Pub candidates they know they can beat in the general.
And total doofus Jeb should head on out to the swamps now and resume catching frogs.
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It’s what “happy turtles” do! ...(ref. to GEICO ads)
The article was interesting and again shows that this race can ebb and tide regardless of the current projections....and or the popularity of those in the lead.
BS they would rather have Trump.
lol
Nice try, though.
I find it stunning that California is given so many delegate votes given the fact the there is ZERO chance that CA will vote Republican in the general election.
It appears that the Republican Establishment has designed this process to give us another weak candidate that provides no real difference from the Democrat opponent.
States that traditionally vote Democrat should be given less delegates, not more, to minimize their impact on candidate choice, since their states will have no positive impact in the general election. And in my opinion, MA, CA, IL, CT, MN, and NY should each be given one delegate (just to be fair).
In the head-to-heads against Hillary and Sanders, Trumps numbers are pathetically low, compared to Cruz, and especially to Rubio (in Minnesota, Rubio is 14 points above Trump's percentage vs. Hillary, Trump losing by 5)
And as to the early wrap-up, this year was structured differently (long before Trump got in), to give later states a bigger say. All the early states are proportional. Whoever wins Iowa will get MAYBE +5 delegates out of the deal over the 2nd place guy, probably less, no one will get a majority of delegates. New Hampshire ditto. Then there will be 2,400 more delegates to be selected. This will likely go into April at least, unless there is a total meltdown of 2 of the top 4 candidates.
Bingo, with the earlies being proportional and the later primaries winner-take-all, it will be a late-decided contest, which was the idea when they made this re-do of the system 2 years ago. Too many "late states" had no say, and it just didn't seem fair. With the crowded field, those early "proportional states" have even less significance. Trumpers , even if they win, are going to get mighty impatient watching their delegate numbers go up so slowly.
Rubio +3
Cruz -12
Hillary -17
Jeb -38
Trump -40
This is where I don't think most Trump supporters see the massive tank trap in their road. It's not as if this will improve when Trump gains name recognition, he's already (more than) topped out in name recognition.
Actually, there are only about 12 states that have true winner-take-all contests. Most have some type of hybrid system, with the state level delegates going to the overall winner, and the delegates for each Congressional district going to the winner of the district. So It could be very difficult for either candidate to get to 1236 delegates before the convention, especially since almost 200 delegates will go to the convention as unbound delegates, not committed to any candidate.
Democrat states DO get less delegates relative to their population. Case in point: Colorado, with 5X the population of Wyoming (and 3 or 4X as many Republican voters), gets 37 delegates, Wyoming almost as many, 29.
You do know that it is impossible for Trump to be much more than 15-20 delegates ahead by the beginning of March, right? Even if Trump got 50% of the vote in all of the first 4 states, he wouldn't have more than 65 delegates which is less than 5% of the total needed. Even if he got 50% of the vote in all of the states prior to March 15th, he wouldn't have enough delegates to get the nomination.
That poster probably did not read the actual article.
Thank you for correcting my misconception. I guess the GOP is slightly less bonkers than I thought.
The GOPe has already made peace with this possibility and are reaching out to trump to begin to cut deals with him. It is Sen. Cruz that they fear and loath, as it is he who will end their crony capitalism, and thus, their gravy train.
Isn’t Cruz connected via his spouse to Goldman Sachs, the vampire squid of crony capitalism?
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