Guess you need to tell these guys that....they're both still running today.
Posted on 04/22/2016 1:24:48 PM PDT by the_doc
I have heard that a lot of Republicans, ESPECIALLY Trump supporters, have said that the candidate who comes into the Cleveland convention with the most delegates should be (automatically?) awarded the nomination even if he cannot get 1237 votes on the first ballot.
I just want to go on record as saying that this widespread notion is politically stupid--even politically monstrous.
The Republican Party's rules since the very birth of the Party have specified that a prospective nominee must achieve a majority of Convention votes to become the nominee. As most FReepers already know, this longstanding fact is not disputed.
Abraham Lincoln, for example, was the 1860 Republican nominee even though it took three ballots for him to win the necessary majority in the voting. By that victory, Lincoln took the nomination away from New York's Senator William Seward--who had gone into the convention widely regarded as the presumptive nominee. Seward had led Lincoln 173 1/2 to 102 on the first ballot--and he still lost the nomination to Lincoln as the best candidate in 1860 for POTUS. (See Wikipedia for the interesting historical details of the struggle to find the Republicans’ best candidate for beating the Democrats in 1860.)
At the risk of laboring the point, I submit that the fellow who waltzed into the Convention as the presumptive nominee was not the best candidate. Lincoln was.
***
I realize, on the other hand, that Trump's supporters will likely call the Convention system horribly unfair--even anti-democratic--if Trump fails to win a majority of delegate votes on the first ballot and then goes on to lose the nomination that he and his supporters covet.
Well, I am sick and tired of the dishonest mantra of "Unfair! Cruz cheated! Cruz stole the election!"--and I intend to shame Trump's supporters in advance if they dare to spew out this sort of crap.
***
Dear FReeper FRiends: The Convention balloting process will essentially amount to a completely necessary RUN-OFF election if Trump fails to achieve the magic number of 1237 votes on the first ballot.
This is as it should be.
To illustrate that: Assume that a progressive Democrat and a conservative Republican and, say, a group of conservative Independents (splitting the conservative votes, of course) are running in a general election for Dog Catcher. Assume furthermore that the Dem gets 49% and the Republican gets 40% and the Independents get a total of 11%. In this scenario, a run-off would be needed. Awarding the much-coveted office of Dog Catcher to the Democrat would be a political travesty.
Well, the same travesty would exist if Trump were declared the nominee by some sort of acclamation without a meaningful political run-off. As it turns out the Convention is the only possible venue for the necessary run-off if Trump does not waltz into the Convention with a majority of delegates. Never mind that the run-off at the Convention would be a run-off using delegates to decide the run-off victor rather than a protocol of more direct democracy. The Convention is the only way to do the run-off.
(Besides, the idea of having only Convention delegates voting in the run-off [or run-offs, as necessary] actually follows our Constitutional Framers' pattern of electors choosing national-level winners, not the rabble of the hoi polloi.)
***
I assume that most FReepers are savvy enough to back away from the simplistic, anti-Republican (and downright, antinomian) position that getting close to a first ballot majority is good enough for immediately declaring Trump the nominee. I assume that FRumpsters would say, “Oh, we’re just saying that getting close to a majority amounts to a revelation of the will of the Party at the grass roots level. Therefore, non-Trump delegates should understand that they have a democratic responsibility to switch their votes to Trump on the second ballot.”
But that argument, too, is asinine. In the first place, one of the reasons why Trump will get at least close to a majority on the first ballot at the Convention is because he has tended to win open primaries. But as Rush has argued, Trump knowingly made hypocritical charges against George W. Bush for the 9-11 incident as a way of drawing Democrats over to him in South Carolina.
Democrats, all of whom are ideologically opposed to our Republic (whether they realize it or not), have helped Trump keep alive the prospect of a first-ballot win in the upcoming Convention--because many of Trump's big pick-ups of delegates have come from open primaries. This situation represents dangerous ideological ground for our Party. Citing Trump's open-primary victories and saying that these give us a lovely reason to make Trump our nominee is actually a RINO notion, a stupid notion (of pandering populism) that it is important to embrace Democrat ideology. This RINO thinking is practically the only reason why the Democratic Party is still nationally viable in American governance. The RINO approach to politics—which is often identified with the GOPe but which really boils down to cowardly pandering for good will with ideological fools—will ultimately prove to be deadly for our Republic if we don’t start electing real Constitutional Republicans.
(If a Progressive Democrat running for the terribly important office of Dog Catcher got only 49% of the popular vote, then a Conservative Republican must demand a head-to-head run-off—not just throw in the towel saying, Ah, the people have clearly spoken. True conservatives will fight and fight hard.
It goes without saying that we have never had a nationwide series of head-to-head, one-on-one elections (or even one-on-one public TV debates of policy) between Trump and his closest competitor, Senator Cruz. [Now that is one political fight that ought to be televised—which is why Trump ain’t going there.])
In the next place, if Trump gets 49% of the votes on the first convention ballot, he will have achieved a delegate-based near-majority with less than 40% of the popular sentiment expressed in the primaries—and that lower figure even includes quite a few Democrat numbskulls (who have perhaps nationalistic but still oddly un-American political ideology). My main point here is that Trump has benefited from State Republican Party rules that have given him a disproportionately high number of delegates (even as Trump has hypocritically leveled nasty and conspicuously false charges against the Party [and against Cruz in particular] for supposedly cheating, for wickedly disenfranchising the voters!).
In the next place, a huge percentage of the delegates for Trump will have come from the Northeast, especially Trump’s home state of New York. Boasting that Trump’s victory over the Constitutional conservative Ted Cruz is practically a sign from heaven that Trump must be proclaimed the nominee just for getting close on the first Convention ballot is, under the circumstances, asinine.
(By the way, one of the main reasons why Cruz’s numbers were so low is because many of the genuinely conservative Republicans who still reside in New York have actually left the New York Republican Party and formed the Conservative Party. This Party includes 150,000 genuinely principled conservatives who could not vote in the closed “Republican” primary.)
The Northeast does have a lot electoral votes for the general election, but the majority of voters in the U.S. do not have what I would “Northeast values.” This is important in the overall political calculus! We must not be unduly impressed if Trump takes a lot of delegates to the Convention from the Northeast. Most Northeastern states are practically write-offs for any Republican candidate in November.
What is even more ominous, while Trump is boasting that he would win his home state of New York in the general election, the voter turnout in the Democrats’ recent New York primary strongly argues otherwise. The smart money says that Hillary would crush Trump in New York—which happens to be her home state, too, at this time—during the general election. So, New York would not be on the proverbial “electoral path to victory” for Trump any more than it would be on such a path for Cruz.
***
In the final analysis, we need to remember that Trump appears to have a popularity ceiling of less than 40% among Republican voters. Many Republicans who regard Trump as a RINO—this time, a thoroughly crass RINO--will hold their noses and vote for him if he is the nominee; however, I can assure my FRumpster Friends that many, many Republicans will NEVER vote for Trump—NO MATTER WHAT.
The NeverTrump crowd will include many of the GOPe elitists and their devotees (who have given indications, according to Rush, that they would prefer Hillary over Trump.) Probably a more ominous percentage of the NeverTrump crowd are those genuine Christians—arguably the very base of the Party—who regard Trump as, not merely a necessarily imperfect sinner, but the most brazenly phony Christian ever to run for the White House as a Republican.
I believe that a contested Convention in Cleveland would force some very serious soul-searching on the part of Trump delegates. I think many of them will conclude that Trump’s profane arrogance could very well cost us our Republic. If they think Cruz has a better chance of beating Hillary, they will need to do what they are supposed to do in the Republican Convention.
At the bottom line, FRumpster Friends, that is the proper way to see a contested Convention as a politically necessary run-off. If Trump cannot reach a majority on the first ballot, he is not clearly a great candidate—even you personally think Trump is a wonderful, noble patriot and the only hope for our Republic. So, please don’t be so dishonorable, so un-American, as to call it cheating if the Party follows its own well-documented rules and winds up eliminating your guy on the final ballot.
So what you got factual to counter it?
If good upstanding, moral Christians think that it is just fine to play dirty, underhanded Convention tricks in an attempt to STEAL the nomination from the front runner, then they aid and abet their Marxist cohorts in crime.
OH! THEY SAY, BUT IT’S NOT STEALING! IT’S ALL LEGAL!
What is legal may not ALWAYS be moral or ethical. In fact, very little that is legal seems to be moral or ethical. If a behavior or action even comes into question, err on the side of safety and avoid it, so as not to be a stumbling block to others. Are not Christians supposed to live their lives BEYOND REPROACH?
Well, we reproach this kind of behavior. Millions of your fellow citizens have already expressed that it would be wrong not to have the front runner become the nominee.
Guess you need to tell these guys that....they're both still running today.
.......”So what you got factual to counter it?”........
Why? ...and what difference would it make to you?
Re-read the article. Let’s just see what happens.
“The truth of the matter....there is a plausible path forward for either man to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.”
———/—////———
Or both to lose the election
That is why I wrote the article. It was for low-information FReepers (ha!).
No, Trump is running for President, and Cruz is running to not “sleep with the fishes”. and perhaps to get a green card.
We are seeing what happens, it's the desperation of dead enders. It would be sad to see if it wasn't so potentially disruptive.
It's time to unite behind the obvious choice.
I am thinking that was your Opus. Fact is, I’ll bet on it.
Trump and his supporters accusing Cruz of cheating is also accusing the grassroots people...he’s impuning them and undermining the election process .
Cruz, of course, has demonstrated repeatedly that he has a campaign organization far superior to Trump’s, having managed to place Cruz loyalists into delegate slots won by Trump in multiple states. Trumps supporters might not like it but it is the game ...and Trumps been losing in that respect and he knows it. Therefore His only alternative to ward off a possible defeat is to de-ligetimize the process.....which he and his campaign is currently attempting to do because he knows that he has yet to obtain the needed delgate count for an outright win, and his ground game efforts are not only very late in the game but more than difficult to get up and running without an enormous amount of $$$$$$$ Trump would need to pay to do so let alone the manpower needed to pull that off.......so he’s left with his own “trickery” to play which we see him doing now.
Further more we all know Trump has been a “No Show” candidate at RNC meetings and State Rep Party Meetings.etc....who instead , if that, sends Carson, who a surrogate for Trump, as he did at the RNC’s spring meeting in Fl., or completely is a No Show as he was in PA’s Major Meetings. Which indicates he cannot stand on his own before those who have questions regarding issues and other venues of importance. ..and which he knows he cannot defend his positions because they are constantly changing from the Republican Platform he once claimed he was running under......he’s not....he knows it and so do they. So the mask is off.....and they know what’s up....and it isn’t pretty to say the least.
So now we have a 3rd Party Candidate running ‘within’ the Republican Party who is currently setting himself and his lobbyist associates (now running Trumps campaign) planning a “Hostile takeover” of the Republican Party. But not as most of his supporters have been led to believe. Rather this is a Liberal group of Bill Clintons Demorats and others who unless they are stopped will hand this over to Hillary Clinton. ...........THAT is what Ted Cruz is fighting against.
Indiana’s going to matter for Cruz to stop this beast agenda the Demorats have concockted........the game now is to maintain the delgates under Cruz’s teams control to get to the convention.....Trump and his thugs know this....so the cry of cheating and all that nonsense will continue.
There is so much more happening in this election then people are aware of ...and many ‘don’t care’, as we’ve heard time and again on these threads. They are wrapped up into this web Trumps created and he’s made certain it’s tight. Why do you folks think Trumps pulled in these heavy hitters so late in the game? He had to “secure” the masses beforehand as they were his tool to get as far as he is now....he only had to maintain the crowds via his rallys and keep them hyped up. ....and it’s worked.
These meetings of the RNC and Manafort are not about playing cozy with one another.....these are major thugs with nasty backgrounds going for the gold, which is the power and might of the United states of America.....and it’s people that they have full intentions of using. You better hope our guys have sufficient “leverage”” behind them to play at this level.....it’s gone way beyond high stakes pocker.
Cruz is cheating in a Constitutional Republic that guarantees us a republican form of government. There is no legitimate reason for super and unbound delegates in a republic. Its a rigged system designed to exclude outsiders.
Yeah, on this Forum dominated by thoughtless snipers and sloganeers and name-callers, I guess I come across that way. (So let me double down: God, [excuse the profanity] some FReepers are low-thinking voters who seem barely willing to read good arguments, much less think clearly about them.)
***
I don't disagree with your comment about Lincoln. As a Texan, I don't much like him even if he was a beloved Republican.
The problem with your slam against Lincoln is that you are too-cutely changing the subject to avoid my very serious, completely valid point. My point in the article I wrote--which I stated very clearly, by the way--was that it is the Convention's job to pick the most conservative candidate who can beat Hillary. I am afraid that the stats suggest that nominating Trump is a fast track to the White House for her.
There are a LOT of NeverTrump guys in the Party now. Mark Levin is one. I am another one. Maybe you guys would try to blame us for Trump losing to Hillary. Ah, but we would blame you guys for nominating an insufferable phony like Trump.
Heck, even Carson admits that Trump is a phony.
Pardon my lengthy response, but I think you need to read it thoughtfully to understand my serious warning. That's to you, Bill.
P.S. Let me say that the point of my article is that guys like you don't get to whine and cry foul if arguably smarter folks decide that Trump is not a good candidate--based on the Republican popularity numbers, for example.
(How's all of that for cerebral prolixity?)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.