The Republican Fustercluck
The state of the Republican race is like nothing we’ve ever seen before. I cannot recall a single instance where there were still so many people with a plausible path to nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire. And while you may think that the Democrats with their superdelegates are confusing the issue, just thank your lucky stars you’re not a Republican Presidential candidate operative. You need Wikipedia, an abacus and a Ouija board to navigate this nonsense.
First of all, to get nominated at the convention, you have to have won 50%+1 of the delegates in at least 8 states. That rule (called Rule 40) will probably change if there are still more than two candidates standing by Cleveland, and none of them is RON Paul, whom the rule was designed to screw in 2012.
Second, not every state has bound delegates. A state needs to have some sort of caucus or primary to have their delegates be stapled to someone, rather than selected by a convention or other method the unwashed don’t participate in directly. Also, there are a little over 100 super-type RNC delegates who are unbound.
Third, there is a mix of proportional and winner-take-all states. No state who goes after IA-NH-SC-NV and before 3/15/16 can award winner-take-all: they must be proportional according to some sort of scheme. And the schemes all vary, including thresholds statewide, thresholds by Congressional district, no thresholds at all, a mix of some or all of the above and do you need a bicarbonate of soda yet? If not, think about these 3/1 “Super Duper” Tuesday scenarios:
If you get 6% in Massachusetts you can have some bound delegates, and some in Virginia, but nowhere else. If you get 14% you can have some of Alaska’s 25 because their threshold is 13%, but you’re SoL for the 77 bound delegates in AR and OK (15% thresholds.) You can get 19.5% of the vote and finish second to the Donald at 20.1% in GA, TN, TX and VT, but you needed 20% so you will get 0, and Trump will get EVERYTHING, which is about 300 bound delegates, or just under a quarter of what you need to be nominated (roughly 1250, for the GOP nom.)
Want that bicarb, now?
This nonsense continues until March 15, when things become winner-take-all-ish. Some states have winner-take-all, or winner-take-all over 50% statewide otherwise winner-take-all by district, or a mix of state-wide and district, or some plain old proportional with thresholds etc. etc. etc.
So what does all this mean? It means Donald Trump is looking REALLY GOOD right now. But it also means that there is no reason for all of the leaders – Trump, Cruz, Rubio – plus Bush and Kasich, to drop out at this time. So long as you’ve still got gas in the tank (money), you’ve got a narrative, and the game changes on (Just Plain) “Super” Tuesday, 3/15, when one good day can put you back in the race.
The trick is to pick your spots, based on the rules, and try to place your resources where only a small movement of the goalposts will enable you to declare a victory. So Jeb Bush may want to consider caucuses and low-threshold states, winning more delegates with fewer votes, waiting for a thinner field, but he has to outright WIN somewhere, as do they all, or Trump will be the obvious nominee after March 15, rather than a tottering front-runner.
As I see it, if anyone is going to knock him off and win outright, they have to have made it a two-horse race by the end of March. If the goal is just to deny him the nomination, and prolong the fight over a slow April (just 3 contests) then two other candidates have to emerge as winners in several states between now and March 16. If Trump hits the Arizona primary on March 22 with a big lead and a fractured field, no one can stop him. After that, you have just 18 races to make your 8 wins, or else be Rule 40ed in Cleveland, and hope Donald likes you as veep-nom.
Call for Speedy Alka-Seltzer!
~Primo
Geez… no wonder they’re all nuts.
1It’s like watching a train wreck in slo-mo.
2Getting better. The Pope has declared Trump a non-christian. Waiting for Trump to order drone strikes on the Vatican.
3Six morons and not a candidate among them. Further bad news for the remaining five, if T-Rump wins the nomination. After calling all of them liars, losers and low energy, even for the flounder flopping T-Rump, it would be a leap to name any of them as a running mate.
4ummmmmm new word mmmmmmm fustercluck
5Don’t mind me. I’m just merrily chomping down the popcorn.
6@micr – It’s been around for awhile – just like jerklecirc.
7So, given all those rules, the GOP could still possibly find a way to take the nomination away from Trump with delegates which are not “…stapled to someone…” or states which have no scheme at all. If the GOP nominates Trump they lose and if they don’t, Trump runs 3rd party and they lose. Sounds good to me.
8Jeez, I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the disorganized ones. But I guess it figures that GOPs would have arcane sneaky rules so that somebody who games the system can jump up and suddenly declare themselves the winner while everyone else wonders what happened.
9Rhea – you consistently come up with on-the-nose observations that I don’t think get kudos enough… kudos!
You have once again hit the nail on the head. Until I started researching this, I wondered how a guy like Trump with a hard ceiling of support around 35% could expect to win.
Now I realize that, the way the system is, by plucking off and owning the low-hanging third of the GOP’s basest base, you can get over 50% of the delegates, so long as there are 3 other viable fools in the race.
The Law of Unintended Consequences has absolutely CRUSHED the RNC this cycle. I have to give it a lot more thought – maybe I can expand this to an article – but this doesn’t feel like an organic anti-establishment drive. That’s just how it’s painted.
10maryelle, if the snacilbupeR play fast and loose with the stapler, expect T-Rump to become unglued. Anything they do to unglue his wig is fine by me. Hope their brokered convention go full bore cannibal. Whatever makes it more solid for our gal our guy to win the general. What should be and could be on the Democratic side is always worrisome. Beyond the Democratic ability to chaos grab defeat from the jaws of victory lies Debbie WTF Schultz. She has an innate ability to train wreck a two funeral even if she was the corpse.
Rhea, good job. Kudos for placing winner in any sentence involving the snacilbupeR. They’ve been so screwed since day 1, when they banked on Snotty Wanker as the ‘man.’ As Diogenes the Cynic, I’d be hard pressed to name one nacilbupeR as plausible to save them as a last minute convention potted plant.
No, Mittens $Rmoney you ain’t it.
11Sandra Day Oconnor says Obama should fill the vacant seat. Watch wingnuts beat her and leave her for dead along the road to Babble-on.
12And Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University and a supporter of Mr. Trump, said that the pope had crossed a line.
“Jesus never intended to give instructions to political leaders on how to run a country,” Mr. Falwell told CNN.
Read more at http://wonkette.com/598886/donald-trump-fires-pope-for-being-bad-at-jesus#MdtlLAkyu22MBhW2.99
I thought jeebus wrote our constitution. Silly me.
13Citizens United was supposed to be the death knell for Democrats because those “corporate-people” always give more to Republicans than they do Democrats. This explains the Republican attack on unions because they were also awarded personhood by the measure. So, of course, demonizing unions was the first order of business after it was enacted.
Now, of course, the R’s are collectively mouthing the word, “Oops.” Citizens United wasn’t supposed to keep people like Cruz and Huckabee and Santorum in the race,fergoshsakes! And who could have foreseen Trump? Still, he would have been deemed a Loser by this point if there weren’t [how many are there at this late stage? 8?] still in the race. But hey, R’s do have a habit of trying to fix the system for themselves and stepping in their own poo in the process. It’s what they do.
14I can hear Fat Tony laugh from the grave.
15e platypus onion, that is beyond ironic!
“Jesus never intended to give instructions to political leaders on how to run a country,” Mr. Falwell told CNN.
What the d’uh? Seriously, Jerry. I could start taking you and your fellow pervangelists seriously, the day you butt your grifting butts out of politics and render onto Caesar to pay your taxes.
16two crows, most excellent observation and comment. Perhaps the most agreement I could reach with the snacilbupeR would be that is that we don’t need to change existing law, but merely enforce it. Let’s become real Constitutional. Beginning with the 14th Amendment (equality) and ending with reversing all the dim sum served to us by the SCROTUS under Roberts ‘guidance.’
17Three cheers for Pope Francis, and a yuuuuuge Bronx cheer to Falwell.
18Hm. I Googled “fuster” and got an interesting mix of names of people, hotels, even a grenade modification. One of the Fusters is a UCSD professor who studies human cognition. His field does not apply to the GOP.
19A few years ago Minnesota had a hockey player named Clutterbuck.
20@Debbo – In broadcasting, those are games where you don’t want to be the play-by-play guy!
21This is worse than plane geometry or even word problems in math. I’m going to go hang up the laundry.
22Umptydump reminds me of a cartoon several years ago. First grade teacher tells her students, “Today Vice-President Biden is going to read us ‘Fuzzy Ducky’s Fun Day Plucking Flowers’!” Biden’s standing there with a big smile, and one Secret Service agent mutters to the other, “This is not gonna end well.”
23But do the Republicans hate Rafael enough to choose The Rump?
The though of a religious zealot like Ted Cruz scares me, Canada doesn’t seem far enough away from him.
24Just spent $25 (so help me!) on OTC headache remedies. The cost kind of caught me by surprise. A scrip for headaches costs less. You can tell how long it has been since I had to restock on headache meds. Its going to be an eternity until election day!
25maggie,you can buy a twin pac of walmart brand headache relief for $4. That is 200-NSAID caplets. I use tow caplets nearly every day reading about wingnuts. Works for me,except having to go into Walmart.
Rhea-then dumbass dubya bursts into the classroom screaming,” I can read it upside down.”
26Primo, what do we need to see for a brokered convention? I sooo want to see an R brokered convention.
27lyntilla, Primo says: the last couple of lines in the article are leading towards that. All it really takes if for Donald to be denied 1,237 votes. If he gets 1,236, it will be a “brokered” convention, in the sense that he will not win on the first ballot and someone will have to switch votes, but if he is less than a couple of hundred votes away, and no one else is close, I don’t think they will/can deny him. Can you imagine being a delegate and Donald wants your vote at the convention? Yes, you can, Postmaster General Lyntilla!
But the real fireworks begin – and all manner of “plane geometry” comes into play – if there is at least one or two other strong candidates, lord knows where THEY will appear from, in this crew.
But say if Ted Cruz wins some southern and western states, maybe 10, and Rubio wins 5-8 states, and Kasich wins Ohio and Jeb wins somewhere or other…
Then anything can happen.
The key is 1) Can Donald be slowed down by ANYONE, including his own big mouth? and 2) Will whoever rises to challenge him do well enough to deny him, but not so well as to win outright?
I think it much more likely that trump or *SOMEONE* will win outright. In the modern primary era, “brokered” conventions are kind of like unicorns: everyone wants to see one, but no one ever has.
28What if Bloomberg decides to run?
29Pearl, if he does get in it will be as a third-party candidate or as an independent. As such he wouldn’t affect this particular furball, unless…
Unless they head for Cleveland with no clear and/or acceptable candidate, he could offer himself as an alternative. But that’s unlikely on a lot of levels.
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