On this lazy Sunday, with the Patriots not scheduled to play
until this evening, I idle away the time by electoral weed-whacking. I continue my struggle to gain some insight
into whom the Republicans will nominate for President [the Democrats will
nominate Clinton -- trust me.]
Let me begin with some facts: There will be 2470 voting delegates at the
Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio next July. Of these, 1865 will be elected, 168 will be
awarded, three to a state or territory, to "party leaders," and 438
will be "bonus delegates" or, as they are sometimes called,
"super-delegates," these last chosen by the State party leadership. 1236 votes at the Convention will secure the
nomination. As I have remarked before
on this blog, I assume that the Convention will nominate someone, and not simply take a pass on the 2016 election.
A little elementary arithmetic tells me that Donald Trump
can win 66.2% of the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses next year and still not have the 1236 necessary for
nomination.
Thus, I see three realistically possible scenarios.
1. Trump actually wins
66.3% of the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses and squeaks into the
nomination with 1236 votes on the first ballot.
I have to confess that this strikes me as rather unlikely, considering
the number of Republicans who say they will not vote for him. Unlikely but possible. It is also possible, of course, that some of
the party leaders or super-delegates will vote for him, putting him over the
top.
2. Trump wins a clear
majority of the delegates chosen in primaries and caucuses, but falls well
short of the 1236 required for nomination.
He does not get the nomination because the remaining delegates line up
behind one of the so-called "establishment" candidates, where they
are joined by enough party leaders and super-delegates to push that candidate
past Trump to the nomination. It now
looks as though Rubio is the likeliest
establishment candidate, but these are early days. If this happens, my guess is that Trump will
erupt, claim [plausibly] that he has been robbed, and bolt the party, either to
declare a third party candidacy or to sit out the election or even [you never
know] to endorse Clinton.
3. Some establishment
candidate actually accumulates a plurality of the delegates chosen in primaries
and caucuses and is pushed over the top by the bonus and super delegates. Since he [it will not be Fiorina] is the
actual primary season winner, Trump will have no grounds for a cry of
"foul," and despite his deal-making expertise, I do not see him
wheeling and dealing his way to the nomination.
If either the first or the second possibility comes to pass,
it will, I believe, be the end of the Republican Party as we have known it now
for two generations. Recall that
forty-five years ago,
the long-established union of Southern segregationists and
white racists with Northern liberals was broken by the Civil Rights Movement
and Richard Nixon's welcome of Strom Thurmond into the Republican Party. Over time, the Republican Party became a
coalition of big business, Wall Street, foreign policy imperial hawks and
Southern Whites, a coalition that elected Nixon twice, Reagan twice, George H.
W. Bush once, and George Bush twice.
Like the earlier coalition within the Democratic Party, this
Republican coalition was inherently unstable, and it now appears to have broken
apart into open civil warfare within the Party.
The Trump candidacy and the threat of an actual Trump nomination have brought
the Party to the brink of collapse. A
Clinton victory over Trump, or a Trump walk-out triggered by an anti-Trump
coalition within the Party, would perhaps be enough to destroy the
two-generation old arrangement that enabled the Republicans to win the
presidency repeatedly.
These are interesting times.
No comments:
Post a Comment