Folks,
What exactly did people think was going to happen?
Of course a defeated candidate endorses the party’s presumptive nominee. Or eventual nominee. There’s no difference in this case.
What exactly did people think a “brokered convention” means?
Delegates are not activists. They are state party people who are getting a free trip to a convention. That’s it. They are not hardliners of any kind. They will do what is best for the party because they have decided the party’s well being optimizes the country’s well being because of superiority over the opposition.
THAT is their perspective of principle. Spare the country the devastation of the opposition, and it’s a good perspective.
What exactly did people think those delegates were going to do? McCain was going to arrive in Minneapolis maybe 20 delegates short of a first ballot victory. Did people think delegates who are not activists were then going to stand up and say . . . we’ll go find someone who has zero delegates to draft, and we won’t care that various delegates are going to find a different someone so that no one has enough?
Of course not. They would just find the remaining 20 delegates and galvanize unity. What exactly did people think was going to be the process to galvanize unity when the McCain supporters 20 delegates short, vastly outnumbering any other faction, were backstabbed by right activists?
Of course Romney endorses the presumptive nominee. Anything else would be profoundly disloyal to the party and by extension to the country.
To some people, anything Romney does is yet another reason to disparage the man, his politics, and his religion.
What did people think was going to happen? A lot of freepers seemed to think they were going to force a bizarre circumstance where, even though McCain had the greatest number of delegates, there would be an insurrection at the convention, and all the delegates would instead vote for FRED & he’d go on to the presidency.
Insane, yes, but it seems to have been a fantasy playing out in the minds of lots of people.