Posted on 04/08/2016 10:17:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
While anything COULD happen at the convention, it’s likely to come down to Trump or Cruz.
I still can’t stand even the sound of John Kasich’s voice.
Now that we have that out of the way, it’s pretty clear that the Republican primaries and convention come down to a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Speculation otherwise — including conspiracy theories — does not seem to live in the real world, according to Charlie Cook:
"Whenever I hear Republicans wax on about the possibility of nominating someone other than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz — talking up John Kasich, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, or some other less polarizing figure — it makes me wonder: Exactly how would that happen?
We all have memorized two numbers. The first is 1,237, the number of delegates needed to win a majority at the GOP convention. The second is 40, as in Rule 40, requiring that a candidate win primaries or caucuses in eight states to have his name placed in nomination. (It was added to the party rules in 2012, pushed by allies of Mitt Romney to stifle Ron Paul.)
Yes, the convention rules committee could theoretically amend Rule 40, but then the change would have to be approved by a majority vote of the delegates. Ask yourself, exactly which delegates would vote to rescind the rule? Trump and Cruz are likely to have more than 80 percent of the delegates locked up, so which one will encourage his delegates to support this change? Short answer: neither. It would be against their interests, and it ain’t gonna happen. Like it or not, this thing is coming down to either Trump or Cruz, and people ought to stop fantasizing about other options."
I’m not quite as certain as Cook, but as I pointed out, both Trump and Cruz are working to make sure they are the only choices.
The real issue is whether Trump gets to 1237 prior to the convention. If that doesn’t happen, Cruz has the clear advantage as he has been waging trench warfare to ensure as many bound “Trump delegates” on the first ballot defect.
There’s also the issue of 170 Rubio delegates, who likely would vote for Cruz:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
Nate Silver writes that even if there were an attempt to unseat both Trump and Cruz, it likely wouldn’t work, Ted Cruz, Not Paul Ryan, Would Probably Win A Contested Convention:
… with Donald Trump’s path to 1,237 delegates looking tenuous, especially after his loss in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, [a contested convention is] a real possibility…
We know that Cruz is likely to do well among delegates chosen through state and local conventions because we’ve seen that demonstrated quite a few times already…. Cruz has also gotten good results at state and local conventions in states that do hold a presidential preference vote. In fact, considering that relatively few states have completed their convention process, it’s remarkable how many examples you can find of Cruz cleaning Trump’s clock: for example, in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina and South Dakota….
We have fewer examples of how Cruz will fare among delegates chosen by party committees, but Tennessee represents an initial success for him. Another good proxy for how state party insiders are leaning is endorsements from state legislators. Cruz has about six times more of those than Trump and more than twice as many as Kasich, according to data collected by Boris Shor and Will Cubbison. Furthermore, Cruz has been fairly popular among state legislators for some time, according to Shor and Cubbison; they’re not merely coming to him out of desperation….
… we’re also learning more and more about who those delegates are now that they’re being chosen. They’re not members of the Washington “establishment.” Instead, they’re mostly grass-roots activists, and many of them want Cruz to be their next president.
Sure, anything could happen. But it’s not likely to. It almost certainly will come down to Trump or Cruz.
Putting aside numerous gratuitous digs at Trump, George Will provides some good information about Cruz’s focus on delegate strategy:
People here at Ted Cruz’s campaign headquarters are meticulously preparing to win a contested convention, if there is one….
The nomination process “is a multilevel Rubik’s Cube,” says Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign manager. “Trump thought it was a golf ball — you just had to whack it.” Roe says the Cruz campaign’s engagement with the granular details of delegate maintenance is producing a situation where “the guy who is trying to hijack the party runs into a guy with a machine gun.”
… Trump, says Roe, is now “bound by his brand rather than propelled by his brand.” If Trump comes to Cleveland, say, 38 delegates short of 1,237, he will lose. Cruz probably will be proportionally closer to Trump than Lincoln (102 delegates) was to William Seward (173.5) who was 60 delegates short of victory on the first of three ballots at the 1860 convention.
Trump, by contrast, is scrambling to assemble a convention delegate team and transition from a campaign waged by force of personality and media domination:
The stepped-up role for the [newly hired] convention manager, Paul Manafort, a veteran of floor fights whose presence on Mr. Trump’s campaign has created anxiety among other top aides, was intended in part to quash reports of infighting and concerns about an organization whose performance has been lackluster at best in a recent string of nominating contests….
But Mr. Manafort faces some daunting obstacles. In the two weeks since he joined a campaign driven by a candidate with a larger-than-life personality, Mr. Trump has lost the Wisconsin primary by double digits to Senator Ted Cruz. The better-organized Cruz campaign has been able to wrangle delegates from Mr. Trump in Louisiana. And with the Colorado Republican convention days away, the Trump campaign last weekend fired the aide overseeing efforts in the state.
(VIDEO-AT-LIK)
It’s at this point I’d normally have a reader poll. But pro-Trump websites and Twitter trolls have become too adept at driving people to online polls, rendering them meaningless.
That’s why we can’t have nice things.
several scenarios
trump wins outright and hit the trails meeting plenty of women and talking up the women in his companies.
Cruz wins and trump runs third party and we lose.
crus wins and maybe 30 percent of republicans who support trump don’t vote for him and we lose.
Kasich or ryan sneak in and we rebel.
but I could be wrong :)
If the GOP rejects the will of the people for the will of the money men, then I’m out. I swore off the GOP forever after I got talked into voting for that rat Mitt Romney. Trump is their only shot to get my vote.
“That’s why we can’t have nice things.”
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The above quote is the last sentence of the article. I wonder if Professor William Jacobson (the author) has been an occasional fan of the “Big Brother” TV show. The quote is a variation of something that “Big Brother” occasionally says to the cast when the misbehave.
Trump doesn’t have the liquid cash to run a real third party campaign.
And out of all your scenarios, the only real choice left is for voter to rally and support Trump as the nominee. If Cruz gets in on a second or third ballot, he will lose to Hillary, and then all the Cruz supporters will be blamed and people will say they should have supported Trump...of course we don’t know if he will win the general, I certainly hope he would, but we would never know and all the anger would be focused on Cruz and his supporters for losing to Hillary.
I can’t see him ever spending half a billion on a general.
He should come clean now about accepting cash in the general.
His assistant has already alluded to that by saying he promised to finance the primary, not he general
His underspending in the primaries might have cost him the 1237 number.
he’s doing great for spending so little, but no ground game can catch up with you.
yeah, the rules are crazy and maybe unfair. Life’s not fair and everyone knew the rules ahead of time.
he has gotten a lot more votes than Cruz. That can’t be ignored.
too bad Kasich is a jerk. he beats Hillary in every poll.
Bernie CRUSHES all of our guys. How?!?!?
we need Hillary to win the primary. That’s why I don’t understand why people want to see her indicted.
this is not 1980. A socialist CAN win this election.
Hillary is eminently beatable.
It’s possible Trump liked the risk of winning it on the boast of not spending much or playing by The Rules. I admire that if true, but still that word RISK!
Trump.
... he has gotten a lot more votes than Cruz. That can’t be ignored.
Trump leads by 210-220 delegates, maybe less since Cruz picked up 21 CO delegates this week and is expected to pick up the rest of them. I heard Trump is at home having his stump speech changed from I and me, polls and I am the greatest to add policy to it to try to “consolidate” support. Not sure he can pull it off a change after 10 months of trashing so many people.
yes, it was a RISK. now he has to play catch up with the ground game and delegate round up.
however, he is still ahead by quite a few delegates.
If Cruz does somehow win the nomination, he will cease to exist as far as the GOP/DNC/MSM are concerned, and the hildebeast wins. If Cruz does get uppity, and actually does break through the GOP/DNC/MSM firewall put up in front of him, they will tear him to pieces.
If you want a good, solid GLOBALIST establishment loser, cruise!
I am not totally versed in delegate strategy.
One thing I can tell you, as much as Cruz is more conservative than Trump, I personally believe that Trump will bring more positive change for the overall good of the country.
At the very least, we will see the wall built, that is his biggest goal and I believe it will be built or he will lose all credibility.
With a border, we at least stop the bleeding and stop the ongoing stream of parasites and potential terrorists into the country.
Without borders, you can be so 100% right on abortion or gay marriage or what have you, but you would no longer have a stable country!
With Cruz, though he said he will build that wall, I have my strong reservation. I believe many conservatives will be disappointed after 4 years of Cruz.
With all those donors, it will be biz as usual.
After decades of following the political scene and thousands of hours of research, I believe Cruz and Heidi are globalist or at least would not oppose the New World Order from Marching on, but Trump is not with that crowd.
The New world order Elite fears Trump, not Cruz.
I am all for the Constitution, but I am tired hearing how he is going to defend the Constitution as if he wrote it!
I don’t buy Trump is going to trash the Constitution.
My 2 cents
I’ve seen bunches of political fads come and go here on Freerepublic. For example, there was a bunch here all giddy about Colin Powell at one time, even cute screen names with Colin Powel in it like we see for Trump. As a former DemocRat who voted for Reagan twice, I see candidates as a whole, not from just one position or from a speech. Donald Trump is yet another one of those fads that the shallow crowd falls for. Worse though is that Donald Trump is playing them for fools while moking them by acting like an ass-clown at every turn.
How do you know what kind of 'cash' Trump has? And IF Trump is forced to go 'real' third party, Cruz will not have enough support to even carry his home state.
Trump qualified for a tax break for New Yorkers making $500K or less
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160308/BLOGS02/160309865/trump-qualified-for-a-tax-break-for-new-yorkers-making-500k-or-less
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