First, some thoughts on yesterday’s results, and then a look at Cruz’s statements. The huge winner of Super Tuesday 3.0 was Hillary ClintonShe dominated the delegate count, swept the night, and used her (annoying, deafening) victory speech to focus attention on the GOP primary candidate Donald Trump — the only Republican most likely to support solve some of her problems on the left and among the so-called Obama coalition. She also witnessed the exit Marco Rubiowhich could boast of one of the strongest general election results Basics AND direct numbers anyone in the race. His potential threat has been neutralized, to the delight of the Liberals. Jan Kasich finished mighty and confidently won the election in his home state of Ohio, denying Trump 66 delegates – but literally there is no path for the nomination, outside of a contentious convention from which he is very unlikely to emerge as the Republican Party’s nominee. There is an argument that his continued presence in the race could support draw votes from Trump in some areas and states in the future, but it is more likely that he has exhausted his usefulness in “Stop Trump” at this point. Nevertheless, he has promised to fight in Cleveland and is making moves For this purpose.
Which brings us to Ted CruzThe Texas senator came in third yesterday delegate raceBut he is the only Republican with a stern chance of stopping Trump. He welcomed Rubio’s supporters with kind words for his Florida colleague. He hopes to unite the anti-Trump movement and fight tooth and nail for delegates throughout the spring, culminating in a contentious convention in July. More on that in a moment. Given that Trump
Very Super Tuesday, in which he has clearly won five of the six nominating contests (Missouri is incredibly close and could require a recount) and has won by far the most delegates, Cruz’s path to victory before Cleveland has all but evaporated. In fact, Trump’s gains in Illinois and Missouri have outweighed his loss in Ohio. He is a stronger favorite today than he was yesterday. But he is still not invincible. Why? Despite boasting in his victory speech that he has a 50 percent national poll rating, his average polling rate is nowhere near this sign at the moment. And then there’s the polarization factor that led to entrenched opposition among the deeply dissatisfied centre-right electorate:
EXIT POLL: In a hypothetical Trump-Clinton showdown, 41% of Ohio GOP voters would consider supporting a third party. photo:twitter.com/pokYIKm0g8
— Meet the Press (@meetthepress) March 15, 2016
Even if those quotas are halved as the cycle progresses, those data points are still really problematic numbers for a candidate with so many stern structural weaknesses. Ted Cruz will now be making a two-pronged case against Trump: that he won’t be elected in the fall, and that he’s unworthy of both the conservative and populist mantles he claims. Now, with
rejected and criticized the concept of a contentious convention for weeks, Cruz’s campaign and allies should pay attention to their candidate’s argument advanced with Hugh Hewitt yesterday evening before the returns arrived. There is a difference between the bet-“He mediated“convention and questioned convention, he said, maintaining that a scenario in which a delegate favorite fails to win the final crown would not necessarily be illegal:
If it matters, he also said that “zero interest“running as Trump’s running mate for vice president, saying the billionaire would lose to Hillary Clinton. John Kasich also said he was “no way“he’ll be on Trump’s ticket. When you consider fireworks in Cleveland, remember what the rules are as followsWhat behind the scenes maneuvering may entail and how polyphonic convention would work. As anti-Trump forces simultaneously get ready for convention battle AND hunch potential independent offer, Ramesh Ponnuru invents plan to make the disputed convention as open and sincere as possible. Interesting:
Republicans could change the rules of their convention to allow some kind of preferential voting. The rule change would have to be proposed in advance so that members of the convention rules committee have time to consider it before voting on it in the week before all the delegates arrive in Cleveland. Then, if it passes the committee, a majority of delegates would have to vote for it as well. When it came time for delegates to vote on the presidential nomination, delegates would rank their candidates — with delegates who had pledged to vote placing the candidates they had pledged to vote for at the top of their lists. This would also likely be necessary — to reduce the likelihood of accusations of filthy tricks — that each delegate should make public his or her order of rank immediately after the vote.
This is a process that would automatically provide the candidate with a majority vote: There would be no need for multiple votes, and therefore no politicking between rounds of voting. The process would also be formally neutral. I suspect that most delegates who aren’t aligned with Trump or Cruz will prefer the senator to the billionaire, so the process will work in Cruz’s favor. But it’s certainly possible that Trump could win an immediate runoff — and even possible, though less likely, that a third candidate could. Whoever lost the nominating contest would have no legitimate objections to the process, which would be completely fair. Supporters of the losing candidate could, of course, abstain from voting for the candidate in the fall, voting for a third-party candidate, for the Democratic candidate, or simply staying home. But they would have no basis for claiming that the nomination was stolen.
I’ll leave you with two divergent views on the way forward, based on last night’s results:
Summary: Hard to imagine Trump NOT getting to 1,237. Beating Cruz in red states, probably beating Kasich in blue states.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 16, 2016
.@jaketapper:”We’ll likely cover the contentious Republican convention”
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) March 16, 2016
