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.
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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.
I respectfully submit that you are wasting your time. What was once a great site for conservative discussion has been taken over by Trump’s hypnotized army, and their behavior is most closely indicative of mass psychogenic illness rather than any sort of coherent movement or philosophy. The basic tenets of this site used to be very conservative. See this thread, started by the site’s founder (now seemingly a proud TrumpTard):
FR is pro-God, pro-Life, pro-family, pro-constitution, pro-limited government. Period!!
Many long-time posters (admittedly not the most independent of thinkers) are willingly rationalizing away all of the idiotic, leftist, and contradictory nonsense coming out of Trump’s mouth on a daily basis while trashing a man whose political career has been the essence of pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Constitution, and pro-limited government.
Most members of this site are at best hypocrites and at worst completely full of shit. As they say, a snake rots from the head down, and when the site’s owner bailed on everything he claimed to believe in, the rest was certain to happen.
Go elsewhere.
Well now...why did you feel the need to start your post being snarky, especially since I was responding to another poster.????.... That’s not exactly the way to go about winning friends and “influencing” people ya know.
Then you further embarrassed yourself by stating I believe what you think other Cruz supporters do about the issue when in fact not only did I not make any statement or claim regarding my own opinion on the matter, but I did not even imply such.
Perhaps you need to reread what I posted to Altura rather than make the assumptions which you have.
I’ll wait to hear what you have to say then.
I know, it's difficult to fore go the talking points, but just try watching it, you'll be shocked about how much of a nothing burger this is. It's not a sign of a drift to the left, it's simply nothing.
Yet you repeat the ridiculous talking points.
....” people think Donald Trump is serious about keeping his word. It does not match up with his history.”......
It doesn’t match up currently either. He’s back-stepped so often he’s wearing out his heels up against the wall. He corners himself all the time!
Cruz is cratering. He won’t see 700 delegates, and will be millions of votes behind. Giving him the nomination would destroy the GOP for generations.
Justify it anyway you want, but Cruz or Kasich will not be the nominee.
Good analysis. These people who write long tripe like this article fail to address the present situation. If the Republican Party hadn't been a rubber stamped for President Obama then voters would have been more inclined to trust party delegates. But that isn't the present situation. Trump has decent chance to get to 1237 but if he falls a couple of hundred votes short and does not get the nomination that would be disaster. The Republican Party would be left in shambles and it will take years to recover. If however they do the right thing and give it to the guy with the most votes, the most state wins they will have some say in how the Republican party is reformed during the Trump Presidency.
Trying to sell this history crap as justification for a crooked process is stupid and no one is buying in.
LOL! Nonsense. None of Trump's voters are going to forget the relentless, despicable character assassination campaign fomented by an unholy alliance of the Left/Media/GOPe/Cruz campaign, in an all-out, no hold barred effort to blunt his march to the GOP nomination.
If Trump comes up short in delegates, that will be the only reason. The idiotic GOPe flagrantly disregarded Reagan's 11th commandment, and now they have to face the inevitable blowback.
The GOPe has created a suicidal dynamic wherein if Donald Trump is denied the nomination, the party will splinter irreparably, voter enthusiasm will be destroyed, countless Trump voters will stay home, and Hillary will win in a landslide.
The GOPe and all the other pilers on have made their bed, and now they're going to have to sleep in it.
Ted Cruz stealing seizing the GOP nomination is an absolute impossibility. Sheer fantasy. These unprincipled, amoral, Machiavellian fools should have thought their "NeverTrump" scheme through a little more thoroughly, because now there will be no quarter given.
Think what you want and say what you want, but you can take that scenario to the bank. This ain't tiddlywinks, this is a Revolution.
If Trump gets screwed, the party will burn to the ground, and it'll be the GOPe's fault, 100%, along with all the other participants, including Ted Cruz. Trump will bear no responsibility whatsoever. And it will be richly deserved.
Checkmate! Donald Trump has already won! I guess you hadn't figured that out yet...
So you Ted Cruz fanboys can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
The Revolution is ON!
Vote Trump
Look you can rant on and on all you want about the GOP /media and all....it’s not going to change the game which currently Trump has not attained the required count. Only he can change that equation.
And you do realize of course that some in the GOP are more than willing to see the Party “burn down” as you say,..... and let Hillary win....
Lakeshark..I do not need to listen to the video...I’m quite aware of what Trump said ‘when he said it’...as well as what he said in his usual habitual “clarification” followup.
Further I did not repeat anyone’s talking points....I referred to how some ‘Trump supporters’ were responding to what he said. ‘My’ opinion on the matter was not nor will it be expressed since you are already confused about the conversation to begin with.
You're just so far behind the curve, as Cruz is, that you can't see the forest for the trees.
Sorry, I've seen the forest and there's no turning back. I'm trying to put together an essay this weekend explaining my epiphany, but all I can say is that I'll be sleeping very well between now and the end of the GOP convention, secure in the knowledge that Donald Trump will be out nominee.
Talk to you soon.
The Revolution is ON!
Vote Trump
Cruz supporters sure have a hard time with reason!
He is league with the Bush's.
Right back atcha
Thanks for the zot ping re Doc.
Is the one who wanted to give us a math lesson a few weeks ago to show us how Trump would lose?
BOL! The Viking Kitties develop a new hi tech zot!
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