of course, RonPaul’s delegates do not have to listen to him on who to support.
And ronPaul is the least likely to be involved in any dealmaking. If they wanna get the support of Newt’s delegates, they don’t even have to approach NEWT. They can approach the delegates directly.
No, it won’t go to 49 ballots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1852_Democratic_National_Convention
but if the candidate picks the delegate.. it's going to be extremely loyal to that particular candidate and be very unlikely to vote for anyone else unless directed to by that particular candidate.
BUT it's possible that in some states the delegates are selected by someone other than the candidate.. and in those cases, their vote could very well change after the first ballot.
If most or all of the delegates were selected by the candidates themselves to represent them from among their most loyal followers... THEN you would have a situation where a deal would have to be made to get someone over the 50% mark
SO... let's look at the situation we are in
lets say Romney gets 35% of the delegates, Gingrich gets 40% and Paul gets 15% (this is not for demonstration purposes)
If Paul absolutely refuses to support either Romney or Gingrich and no deal can be reached (like appointing Paul federal reserve chairman or something like that)... then Gingrich and Romney would have to deal with each other ... if neither is willing to say.. be the vice president of the other... because Gingrich thinks Romney is a liberal and Romney thinks Gingrich is Crazy then ... the only way to resolve the stalemate might be to purpose someone else (possibly that didn't even run) that they can both agree on... so lets say... they purpose ... Jeb Bush... and both Romney and Gingrich are willing to throw their support to Jeb in return for Romney being made vice president, and Newt being appointed chief of staff or something of that nature.