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2016 GOP Candidates for President


Pong Messiah
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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah, silly me. I thought that sort of announcement waited until the RNC convention, after the nomination is made.

 

I guess Kasich has no motivation to work with Cruz, against Trump now. I think it would be hilarious if Trump announced that Kasich is his running mate next week.

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Really obvious and transparent attempt to draw the attention away from Trump after he swept the Northeast. Desperate almost. Cruz has to know he's done at this point, but he probably figures- well, if I'm going down, why not create as much of a ruckus as I can?

 

Hard to see a world in which Cruz clinches this thing. There are really only 3 outcomes at this point:

 

1) Trump dominates California/Indiana, and wins the nomination on the first ballot.

 

2) Trump comes up short from an outright win on the first ballot pre-convention, but gets enough unpledged delegates to get him by on the first ballot.

 

3) Trump doesn't win the first ballot, and chaos ensues.

 

But even in situation 3, I have yet to see a convincing argument why we would expect support to flock to Cruz. In a wide-open convention where anyone could start putting their hat in the ring, there would be a premium on deal-making, and if his Congressional antics show us anything, it's that Cruz isn't particularly well suited to that.

 

You would think Cruz would realize this and decide to go out with some dignity, like Christie and Bush did.

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Tough to say- we haven't seen a true brokered convention since the 50s, so no one really knows what would happen.

 

Conventional wisdom says that people wouldn't actually vote for someone that didn't at least try in the primary process (e.g., a Paul Ryan, etc), in the fears that a nominating a candidate that didn't even bother running would be such a middle finger to the voters that there would be third-party challenges and so on. On the other hand, nothing would stop people from throwing their names out there, so who knows what delegates would actually end up doing. The problem in this case is I don't see the remaining active candidates having broad enough support to get a majority. Trump would certainly lose significant support to Cruz and Kasich on the 2nd and 3rd ballots, but I'm not confident either of them could cobble enough delegates together, and once a few ballots go by and it becomes clear that they have a ceiling... well, it'd be utter chaos. Somebody would probably nominate Rubio, or Bush, or sh-t, even Paul Ryan (despite his claims to the contrary)... hell I wouldn't be surprised if Mitt Romney came out of the woodwork. Complete chaos.

 

Eventually a consensus candidate would break through, but it could be like 1924, which took over 100 ballots to resolve.

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Yup. Even though I'm on the Trump train, it doesn't particularly bother me if he doesn't get the nomination since a brokered convention would be a crazy, once in a lifetime sorta thing- a dream come true for a political junkie like me. Given that political parties are really just loose groups of people with competing interests, we were bound to see one sooner or later. But since delegates (for the most part) are chosen by popular election in primaries- very different than 60 years ago- the likelihood of one happening again in our lifetime is basically 0.

 

Of course, when I say "no one really knows what would happen," I'm including myself in this. For all you know, I could be completely full of sh-t.

 

That being said, no matter how many articles are written on it, I just don't see how Cruz picks up enough support to win it on the second ballot. It goes against basically everything we know about him. As of now I think the smart money is on a brokered convention going well past 2 or 3 ballots, but again, who really knows?

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Awesome! I am looking forward to the GOP convention. The opportunity to see something rare is too exciting for me to convey. I wish I had been participating in this thread with more intelligence and insight into the process than apathy and snark, but I love reading your stuff, CM. Very educational. Thank you.

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