Posted on 03/28/2016 9:47:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Oh, how cruel the game of politics can be — especially if you don’t have a ground game.
On Sunday night, Donald Trump tweeted, “Just to show you how unfair Republican primary politics can be, I won the State of Louisiana and get less delegates than Cruz — lawsuit coming.”
It’s true: On March 5, Mr. Trump took 41.4 percent of the Louisiana vote compared with Ted Cruz’s 37.8 percent and Marco Rubio’s 11.2 percent. Mr. Trump was awarded 18 delegates, so was Mr. Cruz, and Mr. Rubio got 5 delegates.
So what happened between March 5 and Sunday? Mr. Rubio dropped out, and under Louisiana delegate rules, those pledged to Mr. Rubio became unbound — meaning they were free to choose whatever remaining candidates were left in the race. Looks like they chose Mr. Cruz.
Mr. Cruz knows that in order to secure the number of delegates he needs to take the Republican nomination, he’s going to have to woo over Mr. Rubio’s supporters — and although he’s fallen short of an endorsement from the senator from Florida (as of now), many in the establishment lane are seeing Mr. Cruz as the only way to stop Mr. Trump.
Not to mention the grunt work Mr. Cruz’s team is putting in.
Mr. Cruz’s campaign has worked a state-by-state delegate strategy — both encouraging his supporters to run as delegates and by lobbying them to run and serve on various committees at the Republican National Convention.
As The Wall Street Journal noted last week: “Mr. Cruz’s supporters seized five of Louisiana’s six slots on the three powerful committees that will write the rules and platform at the Republican National Convention and mediate disputes over delegates’ eligibility this summer in Cleveland.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Easy answer. Hillary.
Right, seems the party has more ability than the VOTERS would like them to.
RE: Oh ... so why did he win?
He won the plurality of delegates ( that is when the votes were split among those who did not vote for him ).
RE: You know I am trying to understand the cruz voters here - so let me get this straight - if you win but you are honest you can lose your delegates to the one who lost but is better in the game of buying delegates?
I don’t know what you mean by “buying”. If you can prove that money changed hands or bribes were made, then let’s have the evidence.
What happened as I understand is, is that the Rubio delegates had their SECOND choice if Rubio were to drop out ( that is they become unbound ). Since Rubio did drop out, their second choice was for Cruz.
Simple as that.
TO prove that there were shenanigans, the first thing I’d like to know is this -— were this rules regarding unbound delegates in place long before the primaries? or were the rules changed only recently after Trump won the plurality of delegates?
If the latter, then you have a case for calling it shenanigans, if not, then that’s just the rules of the primaries.
RE: If many of the delegates around the country that are currently pledged to Donald are actually Cruz fans. Then, when Trump does not get to 1237 on the first round, who do you think will win on the second round?
There is a case to be made that they will all coalesce around John Kasich.
My reasons for thinking so:
1) Kasich is still in the race even if he won just one state. He must know something.
2) The polls ( if they are to be believe ) show that Kasich does the BEST against Hillary compared to either Trump or Cruz in the general, and that is going to be a difficult factor to ignore.
Remember what the thugs did in miss, a couple years ago. The Gop is rotten, support Trump only.
Sounds like you and I will be at the BREAKFAST, if that occurs!
Lone Watie sent me an invitation.
Looks like Kasich is pulling out of Wisconsin to clear the way for Cruz.
That is something the Trump supporters are keeping a blind eye to.
They support his business shenanigans as ‘just the price of doing business.’
And yet they believe he will be true and honest in his promises to them.
He will not. With him, it’s Trump first, not you supporters first and not America first.
Kasich has no chance of getting enough delegates. He’s pulled all his ads in Wisconsin. Looks like he may be getting on the Cruz train.
Those lawyers in Trump’s pay need to earn their keep.
I realize that Kasich has a slim chance. But my point is this — if we ended up in a contested convention, don’t be surprised if worse come to worst, HE GETS THE NOD.
The Republican party has held 39 national conventions since its first in 1856. At each and every one, a majority of delegates was needed for someone to get the nomination.
Many do not remember or even know that -— but Abraham Lincoln was NOT the choice to be the presidential candidate. It was William Seward ( yes, the one eventually responsible for our purchase of Alaska from Russia ).
Abraham Lincoln won on the third ballot in 1860, even though rival William Seward captured a plurality, 41.5 percent, of the delegates on the first ballot. The reason only trivia geeks remember John Sherman, Leonard Wood, or Frank Lowden is that while those men entered their GOP conventions with a clear plurality of delegates, they fell short of a majority, and lost to another candidate on a later ballot.
So, it can be said that Seward was like the Donald Trump of his time :)
He never said that.
Bingo!
I find it quite remarkable how anti-democratic and pro-elite a lot of Freepers have suddenly become. If the GOP party leaders (and yes, state party leaders are still party leaders) were trying to hand the nomination to Jeb Bush instead of Cruz, even though he couldn’t get all that many people to vote for him (even when, in Cruz’s case, it was fairly clear from Iowa on that he was the only viable anti-Trump candidate), they would be outraged and denouncing the establishment for theft. Instead, they applaud the circumvention of the will of the people and hope the party elites (delegates) decide the nominee. They are proud at how well their candidate does in states were hardly anyone votes—when they should be questioning why he does poorly when large numbers of regular people participate.
“...OR maybe he just has to be smarter and know how to play the game better.”
If you are going to play a game, you have to know the rules to win. The rules to win an election, are in the Election Law Book and in the Republican Party rules and Democrat Party rules. Those documents are easily found - The Election Law can be found on the state’s Secretary of State website. The Republican and Democrat rules are on their individual state website.
Because Democrats in our county did not know the laws/rules - they just did whatever they wanted since they ruled the county for many years, we learned the laws/rules and turned a county from a Democrat county to a Republican county by studying the law book and the Republican Party rules.
Cruz knows all the laws/rules and he is following them. Trump and his chosen campaign leaders must not know the laws and rules so he blames Cruz for not being “fair” and does his usual “I will sue you for not being fair to me.”
“So, did the Louisiana delegate rules change recently, or were they in place since long before the primaries started?”
Perhaps this will help to understand delegate rules:
The rules made at the national convention, only have to do with rules about conducting the convention, not about how delegates are selected for this election season.
The delegate selection process is the purview of the state parties. A state party cannot change the delegate selection process in an ongoing election season. The rules about delegate selection they had before this election season started is the process they must follow.
Hope thee is bacon
Ah yes the Haley Barbour contingent of the wussy Mitch McConnell army. The power hungry dolts who think party is more important than the country and love power more than the constitution
“perhaps we did not pay enough attention to what went on in our country but it would seem to be ‘too late’ to turn around-”
I hope it is not too late. Yes we did let things slide. That is our shame. Now is the time to do better
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