Posted on 02/18/2016 8:38:48 AM PST by King of Florida
If the Republican Party remains divided for much longer, it will start getting more difficult for a mainstream candidate to win the nomination.
Yet Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich all have incentives to stay in the race, preventing the party from getting behind one candidate.
On Super Tuesday, March 1, 25 percent of the delegates to the Republican national convention will be awarded. If the mainstream field hasn't been narrowed by that point, it will become very hard to avoid serious damage to the candidate who ultimately emerges as the party's anointed favorite. The top mainstream candidate could easily fall more than 100 delegates short of what he might have earned in a winnowed field. He would even be in danger of earning no delegates at all in several of the largest states because of one number: 20 percent.
That's the threshold for earning delegates in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Vermont, which combine to award 57 percent of the delegates on Super Tuesday and 14 percent of all of the delegates in the Republican race. If candidates don't get 20 percent of the vote, they get no delegates (unless they finish in the top two of a congressional district, in which case they get a delegate).
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
brokered convention with 6 nominees
I think Yeb is out of the race on Super Tuesday, if not earlier.
Many of the March 1 primary states are early voting right now. The establishment lane’s Super Tuesday vote is already being diluted.
A few articles up says Jeb is out of money and is done.
It will be a three man race soon, then maybe down to 2 in April.
This is exactly why I want Jeb and Kasich to stay in the race until at least April 1.
[full disclosure - Cruz supporter]
By my math, and if current polls are to be believed, Trump will go into the convention with about 1,300 delegates. Enough to not have a brokered convention.
Interesting. This was the Fox News meme all week ... “If the mainstream GOP can just get down to one candidate they can beat Trump” (and stated that way, as advocacy rather than analysis).
Boo hoo guys, now you know how we’ve felt time after time when an array of good conservative candidates peck each other into oblivion while a McCain or Romney sails to nomination and defeat.
Possibly Jeb stays in because he’s well funded, but realistically, SC is his last battle, absent a good showing there. He’s pulled out all the stops (read: family). Not much more he can do elsewhere if this doesn’t work for him.
Post 3/1 the party establishment will using every option including nukes to winnow the field if a clear establishment leader hasn’t materialized.
Unless Kasich suddenly turns golden, or Bush pulls off a miracle Rubio looks right now like the defacto.
Real question is, will Cruz back out if it becomes obvious he’s stuck at 20% or less? If not Trump needs to get up to around mid 40s to keep the establishment in check. Trump would gain some from Cruz’s backers if he drops out, but I suspect the majority will go to Rubio in the end, so he really needs to get to mid 40s pronto to be safe.
Trump is likely to continue to gain momentum and points in the polls as his wins mount. Rubio will rapidly rise as the establishment rallies around him.
Rubio is functionally I different than Bush or Kasich as far as I’m concerned, another guy owned by the same money who will just keep selling America down the toilet. Oh sure he’ll give nice oratory but won’t change a damned thing of substance.
I guessing Jeb stays in until the money runs out; not because Jeb wants to win (”please clap”) but because his cadre of campaign consultants are committed to burning thru as much of his campaign cash as they can to get their percentage of ad buys. It’s cynical of me, I know.
Yeah, I’m sure the New York Times gives a damn about the GOP... yeah, right.
I've heard him say it, and have no reason to doubt him. If he was basing his run on winnning in the south he'd already have quit.
Aslo, Ben Carson is ahead of Jeb.
So far the only candidates who have quit ahead of the people they are ahead of are Rand Paul and Scott Walker. (And they both had day jobs to go back to.)
The rest have 'fallen off the bottom'.
Jeb's run is starting to get humiliating. I am sure he'd like to stay in until Florida, March 15, but last I saw he was in fourth in polls there too.
Maybe he leaves after humiliating defeats in Nevada and South Carolina.
“brokered convention with 6 nominees”
Nope. Brokered convention with Rubio as Trump’s “choice” for VP.
Certainly delegates are not required to vote for the person who they were pledged to in most states after the first ballot. I suspect few of the delegates will be real Trump delegates. Instead they will be GOPe types who are attending based on winning caucus seats, who in many cases may have peferred some other candidate.
Candidates can try "throwing" their votes: For instance Rubio instructs "his" delegates to vote for Cruz, but the delegates are under no obligation to follow those instructions.
In most cases trying to "throw" the vote in the first round is technically against the rules, but it might happen. There are no legal penalties that I'm aware of for being an "unfaithful delegate".
How dedicated to candidates who have dropped out will their pledged delegates be. Say you are one of the handful of delegates that Carson picks up: do you feel a real duty to make a completely symbolic (and possibly rule-following) vote for Carson, or if you look at a convention in play do you decide "I'm going to help Ted Cruz" or "I'm going to help put Trump over the top so we don't have a brokered convention" or even: "I'm going to see what type of position I can get in the Rubio administration vs. the Cruz administration"?
"Brokered" implies some sort of order to the proceedings, but things are pretty different than the last time we went this route.
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