Posted on 03/16/2016 12:39:04 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has secured more than half of the delegates needed to win the nomination, but he will need to pick up his pace to clinch 1,237 delegates and avoid a contested convention.
Trump’s strong performance in the Tuesday night primaries will make it tough for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to catch him. He has secured 621 delegates, according to The Associated Press's projections as of 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, compared to 396 for Cruz and 138 for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Those three men are now the only active GOP candidates. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suspended his campaign on Tuesday after losing Florida. He has 167 delegates.
About 60 percent of the 2,472 GOP delegates have been awarded, and Trump has won about 47 percent of them.
If he continues to win at that same clip, he’d fall more than 100 delegates short of 1,237, which would set up a contested convention.
That's the result Kasich is hoping for, since the Ohio governor has no chance of getting to 1,237 himself and little realistic chance of overtaking Trump.
Cruz believes he can still take the delegate lead from Trump, but he would have a better chance with Kasich out of the race and only two men to divide up the rest of the delegates.
Even that road would be tough for Cruz, however, who would need a win in Arizona's winner-take-all primary next week as well as a victory in Wisconsin's April 5 contest.
For Trump to get to 1,237, he needs to win more than about 60 percent of the remaining delegates.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Let Trump go to the convention 100 votes short and try to deny him the nomination!
The logical fusion ticket, that would bring together some 80% of all the primary voters in one tent, will be resisted furiously by the Republican back-stablishment, as well as the #NeverTrump and the #NeverCruz people.
Which is a pity, really, as the REAL enemy is Herself, a fact that is continuously lost sight of.
I do not believe there is any great personal animus between The Donald and Ted Cruz, and in fact, they probably agree on a great many policy questions in principle, if not necessarily in the execution.
JFK and LBJ despised each other in 1960, yet they somehow ended up on a “fusion” ticket that year, and Papa Joe Kennedy did not have to buy one damned vote more than he needed in Illinois, while LBJ narrowly carried Texas.
History is sometimes written in invisible ink.
But Trump/Cruz should be writ large. And in starkly contrasting colors.
Utter idiocy!
Ah, but Cruz and/or Kasich only need to get a total of 498 combined delegates to insure an open convention. (1061 delegates available - 564 delegates needed by Trump = 497 + 1 delegate = 498). So combined, Cruz and Kasich only need to get 46% of the delegates to force an open convention.
I read that the California primary is no longer winner take all. Nancy Pelosi’s district will send as many delegates to the GOP convention as a solid GOP district. Uh oh. The rats in California can sabotage Trump.
Or not.
Missouri delegates have not been allowed yet and Trump is only 50 something off where he needs to be to win 1237
Kasich could be the Trump slayer with a little sling shot. I hope he is a bad shot.
Go here:
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president
Missouri has given Trump 51 delegates.
Not to mention that such a deal would be illegal.
That's TOTALLY insane. This includes districts which make Hank (Guam might capsize) Johnson's constituents look intelligent as well as those which make Nancy Pelosi look moderate and reasonable, IOW, areas which wouldn't vote GOP if they were nuked by Muslim terrorists.
The GOP really needs to revamp how they allocate delegates if California has so many they can award them in a manner this inefficient.
Rubio really helped Trump last night
RE: How is Cruz going to do in NY/NJ I wonder?
Take it from this New Yorker — NOT GOOD.
He’s already turned off a lot of folks with his “Trump embodies New York Values” remark ( no matter how true it is and no matter how hard he tries to explain what he meant ).
Trump just needs to promise Cruz that he will nominate him, and make his best effort to advance Cruz's position. If the Senate hates him, that's Cruz's problem. Alternately, Cruz can be Attorney General, or stay in the Senate.
Cruz should know by now that he won't get the nomination, and any promises from the Establishment that he will, if he takes down Trump, are worthless.
“Trump needs to make a deal with Cruz for a SCOTUS position to get him out of the race and backing Trump. Although, knowing Cruzers, they will call Cruz a backstabber.”
Let’s have some realpolitik here. Trump has not closed the deal with conservatives. And he’s a long way from being there. And conservatives quite rightly want conservative things to happen over the next four years. If we didn’t, we’d be hypocrites. IMO, conservatives lose if Cruz makes a ANY deal with Trump OR with the GOP-E, unless the deal is policy concessions from Trump on key conservative issues.
Cruz should not accept the VP nomination—that would be Trump’s way of making conservatives irrelevant for the next four years by silencing on of our best advocates. If the funds are there, Cruz needs to stay in the race.
Trump will likely win either an outright majority or near majority of delegates regardless. So Trump should be the nominee, not some GOP-E brokered b.s. candidate. Here is how Trump and Cruz both win in that event.
At the convention, Cruz needs to endorse Trump and release his delegates to support Trump (assuming Trump is near a majority) without a deal and then campaign for Trump in the general election, without giving Trump his organization.
Trump is the almost certain nominee but, in my opinion, still cannot be trusted with all the power in the party from a Tea Party point of view—Trump might turn out great or terrible, there’s just no way to tell at this point. So Cruz’s organization, which is formidable, needs to remain intact and out of Trump’s control.
At that point, Cruz is setup to be Trump’s conservative conscience in the Senate should Trump win the general election. If Trump governs as a conservative, he will find a conservative movement eager to work with him. A powerful and no-longer-evil Republican party will emerge from that coalition. If he governs as a moderate or liberal, he will lose us and the R’s will probably go the way of the Whigs.
OTOH, if Trump does not win the general election, this approach makes Cruz the overwhelmingly likely nominee in 2020.
One other thing, Trump and Cruz together need to completely clean out the RNC immediately on Trump winning the nomination and take control of that pitiful wreck of an organization.
Actually, he’ll come in around 1300, possibly more. All those candidates who have dropped out and actually won any delegates? Those delegates are now unbound and (Rush discussed this) they are free to be wined and dined. I’m betting Trump already had a dozen of these people locked up.
If Kasich doesn’t win a majority of delegates in 8 states what happens to his delegates since he won’t be put into nomination. Same question for Cruz. It seems to me if only one person is in nomination only one person can win. Too logical?
Methinks your Freudian slip is showing ;-)
“knowing Cruzers, they will call Cruz a backstabber”
Doubt it. As a Cruz supporter I can live with him being VP or a Supreme Court justice. Didn’t mind the idea of him leaving the senate to be president either.
“The GOP really needs to revamp how they allocate delegates if California has so many they can award them in a manner this inefficient. “
Well, I think CA has closed primaries. So even though Nancy Pelosi’s district is pitiful when you include Dems, only the R’s there will elect delegates. That makes candidates campaign all over the State, not just LA and SF. I think that’s a good thing.
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