Free Republic

NBC's Hallie Jackson reports Cruz has changed his focus to Pennsylvania and making a play for the state's unbound delegates. Jackson, the network's Cruz correspondent, said even if Cruz has a third place finish in Pennsylvania's Republican primary, he'll win more than half the delegates. "It's very telling that's Ted Cruz tonight is not in Brooklyn or Manhattan or any of the boroughs or state. He's in Pennsylvania," reported Jackson. "He'll be in Philly for his watch party tonight," Jackson said. "That's indicative of where he and his campaign see this race going, to Pennsylvania, where they are looking to...

If the Republican primary process were designed to produce an exactly proportional result based on voters' choice rather than a winner, the party would have been doomed to a contested convention almost from the start. Donald Trump, who has failed more than any other GOP presidential front-runner in recent history to unite the party behind him, would have no chance of securing the nomination, for he has won only 37 percent of primary votes so far. Keep this in mind as Trump gripes about how his opponent Ted Cruz secured all 37 delegates at the Colorado convention last weekend. The...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Look, here's what you have to know here if you want to be able to read this NBC story and understand it. You have to understand that the Republican Party, the GOP, the RNC, whoever. They structured -- and they do it every year; they change the primary process. They change a number of things about it, based on what went wrong the previous year. And the previous year is four years ago, and they wrote rules four years ago to stop somebody like Ron Paul. Okay, so those rules are still in place, and they're going...

The funniest part of this is when he says the rules in Colorado were changed to help “a guy like Cruz.” In reality the rules were changed to block guys like Cruz. Colorado used to award its delegates via a caucus, but that backfired in 2012 when Rick Santorum upset Mitt Romney there. That’s how it tends to go with caucuses — unlike a statewide primary, they benefit well-organized candidates with a passionate grassroots following, both of which are hallmarks of Cruz’s campaign. When the rules were altered last August, decoupling the caucus from the process of awarding delegates, it...