IF SO, ALL BETS ARE OFF… AND TRUMP COULD LOSE
THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT ARE TRYING DESPERATELY TO OVERTURN TRUMP’S POPULAR VOTE LEAD
For the time being, Donald Trump is sitting pretty. He has a comfortable lead of over 200 delegates over Ted Cruz. On paper anyway.
And if Trump were able to maintain his current level of support, he just might squeak in and top 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination on the first ballot (see the chart). And then thumb his nose at the GOP establishment.
But, and this a big BUT, the Republican Party insiders are pulling out all stops and trying every trick in the book to thwart Trump’s eventual nomination. And if they are successful and the GOP’s nomination leads to a contested convention, all bets are off.
What’s a “contested convention?”
Good question. You’d have to be 58 or older to have voted in one. That’s how boring and predictable our elections have been in the last 40 years. Because the last time GOP had a contested convention was in 1976. And the situation was not all that different from the current race.
Back then, Ronald Reagan was also an outsider like Trump. He was running against the incumbent president – Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford had a slight lead in both popular vote and delegates before the Republican National Convention. But he did not have enough delegates to secure the nomination. In the end, Ford managed to receive the necessary support on the first ballot to edge out Ronald Reagan.
When was the last “brokered convention?”
As for a “brokered convention,” meaning mayhem that ensues after no candidate gets the absolute majority on the first vote, the last time America had one of those most of the voters today weren’t even born.
The last brokered GOP convention was in 1952. In that race, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft entered the convention with 35% the delegates, followed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower with 26%, California Gov. Earl Warren with 17%, and Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen with 11%.
Most delegates at the convention preferred Taft as the true conservative, but shifted their votes to Eisenhower after some heavy horse-trading in the back rooms (see the comment about Earl Warren above). And so the No. 2 candidate won.
The same thing could happen to Trump this year unless he manages to win outright win on the first vote.
My, oh, my… we do live in interesting times, don’t we? Which, by the way, is a Chinese CURSE. 🙂
PS: I hope the die-hard Republicans realize, of course, that should Cruz and the GOP establishment somehow manage to lie, cheat and steal the nomination from Trump, there might be a revolution in this country? Is that what you really want? If the majority of Americans are voting for Trump – right or wrong – who are we or the GOP chieftains to deprive them of their choice? As James Baker put it in a recent CNN interview, if that happens, the GOP “will be in for a lot of grief.” Because the Trump supporters will not vote for the GOP candidate in the general election, he added. Which means, we would get Hillary. Is that what you want?
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Also see…
TRUMP SOUNDING MORE LIKE AN INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE (Apr 3, 2016)
WHITE HOUSE AND ISLAM: A LONG-TERM LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN MONEY AND OIL – http://wp.me/p3QU1S-16V* * *
Also see…
- FDR AND KENNEDY OPENED WALL STREET-WASHINGTON REVOLVING DOOR IN 1934
- ANYBODY BUT A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN
- HILLARY CLINTON: A NIXONIAN CANDIDATE
- PAYBACK TIME FOR THE CLINTONS: THEY HAVE MADE OVER $25 MILLION IN SPEAKING FEES SINCE EARLY 2014
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