Friday, March 18, 2016

Whither the Republican party?

Lotta handwringing going on.  The Donald is leading in pledged delegates right now.  He seems to pick up 35% of the primary vote every time.  Right now he has 600 and some delegates, only half what is needed to clinch the Republican nomination.  Ted Cruz is behind, but not impossibly far behind,  with maybe 400 and some delegates.  Maybe The Donald will pick up another 600 delegates by convention time, which will give him 1237, the amount needed to win out right.  And maybe he won't.  No body knows, and nobody really believes the polls.
   If The Donald gets enough delegates by convention time, he still has a problem.  Although 35% of the party likes him enough to vote for him, that leaves 65% of the party that doesn't like him, plus all the democrats don't like him.  Does not look good for The Donald to beat Hilliary.  The Republican establishment is scared out of their socks by these odds.  If The Donald leads the party to a resounding defeat in November, they will most likely get voted out of office themselves.  So they are going all out to get anyone besides The Donald nominated.  At this point, the only likely alternative is Ted Cruz.  All the other candidates have dropped out (except Kasich who doesn't have much in the way of delegates).  The Trump voters will be outraged by a convention that doesn't nominate their man and might do all sorts of bad things. 
   If  The Donald lacks the delegates by convention time, all sorts of things might happen.  Ted Cruz might be able to pull all the non Trump delegates behind him and get the nomination on a later ballot.  The establishment might try to slip in Romney or McCain, or some body, anybody else.  If they succeed they will outrage all the voters, which is a bad thing.  Some charismatic nobody might arise and sweep thru the convention on a wave of applause.  That happened, once, Wendell Wilkie back in 1940.  Hasn't happened since. 
   Or something else might happen.  Stay tuned.

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