The Convention Could Very Well Prove to Be a RUN-OFF Election That Trump Could Very Well LOSE

self | 04/22/16 | the_doc

[the_doc]

I have heard that a lot of Republicans, ESPECIALLY Trump supporters, have said that the candidate who comes into the Cleveland convention with the most delegates should be (automatically?) awarded the nomination even if he cannot get 1237 votes on the first ballot.

I just want to go on record as saying that this widespread notion is politically stupid--even politically monstrous.

The Republican Party's rules since the very birth of the Party have specified that a prospective nominee must achieve a majority of Convention votes to become the nominee. As most FReepers already know, this longstanding fact is not disputed.

Abraham Lincoln, for example, was the 1860 Republican nominee even though it took three ballots for him to win the necessary majority in the voting. By that victory, Lincoln took the nomination away from New York's Senator William Seward--who had gone into the convention widely regarded as the presumptive nominee. Seward had led Lincoln 173 1/2 to 102 on the first ballot--and he still lost the nomination to Lincoln as the best candidate in 1860 for POTUS. (See Wikipedia for the interesting historical details of the struggle to find the Republicans’ best candidate for beating the Democrats in 1860.)

At the risk of laboring the point, I submit that the fellow who waltzed into the Convention as the presumptive nominee was not the best candidate. Lincoln was.

***

I realize, on the other hand, that Trump's supporters will likely call the Convention system horribly unfair--even anti-democratic--if Trump fails to win a majority of delegate votes on the first ballot and then goes on to lose the nomination that he and his supporters covet.

Well, I am sick and tired of the dishonest mantra of "Unfair! Cruz cheated! Cruz stole the election!"--and I intend to shame Trump's supporters in advance if they dare to spew out this sort of crap.

***

Dear FReeper FRiends: The Convention balloting process will essentially amount to a completely necessary RUN-OFF election if Trump fails to achieve the magic number of 1237 votes on the first ballot.

This is as it should be.

To illustrate that: Assume that a progressive Democrat and a conservative Republican and, say, a group of conservative Independents (splitting the conservative votes, of course) are running in a general election for Dog Catcher. Assume furthermore that the Dem gets 49% and the Republican gets 40% and the Independents get a total of 11%. In this scenario, a run-off would be needed. Awarding the much-coveted office of Dog Catcher to the Democrat would be a political travesty.

Well, the same travesty would exist if Trump were declared the nominee by some sort of acclamation without a meaningful political run-off. As it turns out the Convention is the only possible venue for the necessary run-off if Trump does not waltz into the Convention with a majority of delegates. Never mind that the run-off at the Convention would be a run-off using delegates to decide the run-off victor rather than a protocol of more direct democracy. The Convention is the only way to do the run-off.

(Besides, the idea of having only Convention delegates voting in the run-off [or run-offs, as necessary] actually follows our Constitutional Framers' pattern of electors choosing national-level winners, not the rabble of the hoi polloi.)

***

I assume that most FReepers are savvy enough to back away from the simplistic, anti-Republican (and downright, antinomian) position that getting close to a first ballot majority is good enough for immediately declaring Trump the nominee. I assume that FRumpsters would say, “Oh, we’re just saying that getting close to a majority amounts to a revelation of the will of the Party at the grass roots level. Therefore, non-Trump delegates should understand that they have a democratic responsibility to switch their votes to Trump on the second ballot.”

But that argument, too, is asinine. In the first place, one of the reasons why Trump will get at least close to a majority on the first ballot at the Convention is because he has tended to win open primaries. But as Rush has argued, Trump knowingly made hypocritical charges against George W. Bush for the 9-11 incident as a way of drawing Democrats over to him in South Carolina.

Democrats, all of whom are ideologically opposed to our Republic (whether they realize it or not), have helped Trump keep alive the prospect of a first-ballot win in the upcoming Convention--because many of Trump's big pick-ups of delegates have come from open primaries. This situation represents dangerous ideological ground for our Party. Citing Trump's open-primary victories and saying that these give us a lovely reason to make Trump our nominee is actually a RINO notion, a stupid notion (of pandering populism) that it is important to embrace Democrat ideology. This RINO thinking is practically the only reason why the Democratic Party is still nationally viable in American governance. The RINO approach to politics—which is often identified with the GOPe but which really boils down to cowardly pandering for good will with ideological fools—will ultimately prove to be deadly for our Republic if we don’t start electing real Constitutional Republicans.

(If a Progressive Democrat running for the terribly important office of Dog Catcher got only 49% of the popular vote, then a Conservative Republican must demand a head-to-head run-off—not just throw in the towel saying, Ah, the people have clearly spoken. True conservatives will fight and fight hard.

It goes without saying that we have never had a nationwide series of head-to-head, one-on-one elections (or even one-on-one public TV debates of policy) between Trump and his closest competitor, Senator Cruz. [Now that is one political fight that ought to be televised—which is why Trump ain’t going there.])

In the next place, if Trump gets 49% of the votes on the first convention ballot, he will have achieved a delegate-based near-majority with less than 40% of the popular sentiment expressed in the primaries—and that lower figure even includes quite a few Democrat numbskulls (who have perhaps nationalistic but still oddly un-American political ideology). My main point here is that Trump has benefited from State Republican Party rules that have given him a disproportionately high number of delegates (even as Trump has hypocritically leveled nasty and conspicuously false charges against the Party [and against Cruz in particular] for supposedly cheating, for wickedly disenfranchising the voters!).

In the next place, a huge percentage of the delegates for Trump will have come from the Northeast, especially Trump’s home state of New York. Boasting that Trump’s victory over the Constitutional conservative Ted Cruz is practically a sign from heaven that Trump must be proclaimed the nominee just for getting close on the first Convention ballot is, under the circumstances, asinine.

(By the way, one of the main reasons why Cruz’s numbers were so low is because many of the genuinely conservative Republicans who still reside in New York have actually left the New York Republican Party and formed the Conservative Party. This Party includes 150,000 genuinely principled conservatives who could not vote in the closed “Republican” primary.)

The Northeast does have a lot electoral votes for the general election, but the majority of voters in the U.S. do not have what I would “Northeast values.” This is important in the overall political calculus! We must not be unduly impressed if Trump takes a lot of delegates to the Convention from the Northeast. Most Northeastern states are practically write-offs for any Republican candidate in November.

What is even more ominous, while Trump is boasting that he would win his home state of New York in the general election, the voter turnout in the Democrats’ recent New York primary strongly argues otherwise. The smart money says that Hillary would crush Trump in New York—which happens to be her home state, too, at this time—during the general election. So, New York would not be on the proverbial “electoral path to victory” for Trump any more than it would be on such a path for Cruz.

***

In the final analysis, we need to remember that Trump appears to have a popularity ceiling of less than 40% among Republican voters. Many Republicans who regard Trump as a RINO—this time, a thoroughly crass RINO--will hold their noses and vote for him if he is the nominee; however, I can assure my FRumpster Friends that many, many Republicans will NEVER vote for Trump—NO MATTER WHAT.

The NeverTrump crowd will include many of the GOPe elitists and their devotees (who have given indications, according to Rush, that they would prefer Hillary over Trump.) Probably a more ominous percentage of the NeverTrump crowd are those genuine Christians—arguably the very base of the Party—who regard Trump as, not merely a necessarily imperfect sinner, but the most brazenly phony Christian ever to run for the White House as a Republican.

I believe that a contested Convention in Cleveland would force some very serious soul-searching on the part of Trump delegates. I think many of them will conclude that Trump’s profane arrogance could very well cost us our Republic. If they think Cruz has a better chance of beating Hillary, they will need to do what they are supposed to do in the Republican Convention.

At the bottom line, FRumpster Friends, that is the proper way to see a contested Convention as a politically necessary run-off. If Trump cannot reach a majority on the first ballot, he is not clearly a great candidate—even you personally think Trump is a wonderful, noble patriot and the only hope for our Republic. So, please don’t be so dishonorable, so un-American, as to call it cheating if the Party follows its own well-documented rules and winds up eliminating your guy on the final ballot.

[caww]

Go ahead and keep believing in the fantasy Trump and his thugs have made for you.....again that is your prerogative.

[the_doc]

BTTT.

[the_doc]

Thanks for the promise (and the tagline!).

[caww]

I see the lead hallway monitor has showed up and paged his gang.....I will not be answering any posts from this point on on this thread.

[Gator113]

Good.

[the_doc]

Good post but if you really think there is a possibility that trumpers will see reason, you are a bit optimistic.

Hi again, altura.

Oh, but puh-leez don't sell me short. I am doing all of this to set up "I told you so." (It's a spiritual thing, I guess you'd say.)

[Gator113]

I am convinced that Ted really did eat the Green Eggs and Ham.

[the_doc]

I would recommend you change your tagline. It suggests that you actually think Trump is a God-fearing man.

[the_doc]

See my #119.

[sargon]

I assume that most FReepers are savvy enough to back away from the simplistic, anti-Republican (and downright, antinomian) position that getting close to a first ballot majority is good enough for immediately declaring Trump the nominee.

That would be true except for the relentless campaign of character assassination which amounts to a full blown conspiracy, featuring an unholy alliance between the Left/Media/GOPe, and Cruz campaign, and kicked off with Mitt Romney's shameful and traitorous address.

So, in that context, you're incorrect.

Donald Trump deserves the nomination regardless. If he comes up short, it won't be by much. It'll be close enough to chalk it up to the diabolical "NeverTrump" conspiracy. To enbrace handing the nomination to Ted Cruz, one must be in willful denial of the aforementioned conspiracy, in addition to ignoring what Trump has done for voter enthusiasm, creating a yuge gap, and holding the potential for GOP demographic gains that would relegate the Democrat party to minority status for decades to come.

So, the GOPe/NeverTrump crowd are fully responsible for this dynamic, and now it's going to come back and bite them in the ass, especially if they succeed in denying Trump the 1,237.

Trump's voters are furious and we're loaded for bear, and if he's denied the nomination and supplanted by some clown who arrives with half as many delegates, there's gong to be a civil war, a splintered party, destroyed voter enthusiasm, countless Trump voters staying home, and a Hillary Clinton Presidency in November.

Under normal circumstances, a floor fight would be survivable. But these aren't normal circumstances. Far from it. Under these particular circumstance, a floor fight which goes against Trump will be an unmitigated disaster. There will be no redemption possible.

The GOPe has made their bed, and now they're going to have to sleep in it. If they screw Donald Trump, they screw us, and their crooked house is going to burn to the ground. And I'll bring the gasoline just to help things along.

It's Donald Trump, or the Revolution fails.

It's Donald Trump, or President Hillary gets elected in a landslide.

It's Donald Trump, or a new party arises to replace the illegitimized GOP.

Damn the torpedoes!

Vote Trump. Unite or DIE...

[the_doc]

The United States was not founded as a democracy, but as a Republic--i.e., a nation not ruled by men, but by rules. As our Framers would have pointed out to you, democracies tend to be dominated by thugs complaining about everything when they don't get their way--until they can get populistic fools to throw out the LAW and the RULES--and muscle their way into populistic control even when they don't have a majority.

Pardon me for being the one who is defending democracy by daring to point out that Trump DOESN'T have a majority. (Gee that was the main point of my essay, now, wasn't it?)

[the_doc]

Nope, I have to disagree with you. The Party system exists as a reflection of the unworkability of purely direct democracy (a political philosophy of true democracy that our Framers vigorously opposed anyway).

The "Convention-balloting-as-a-run-off" argument works precisely because it is the way to may make sure that a guy who can't even get a majority approval by his own Party doesn't get nominated and subsequently slaughtered in the general election.

All of the cheerleading hype about Trump cannot undo the fact that about 60% of Republicans don't like him and many of those will never vote for him.

What's your fix for this disastrous mess? (That's a rhetorical question, because you don't have any fix but the Convention itself.)

***

Look, I don't like the GOPe anymore than you do. But we can get out of this mess by holding the GOPe's feet to their own rules fire. And what I was saying in my modest essay is that FRumpsters don't get to whine if Trump loses on the grounds that 60% of Republicans don't like him at all.

[the_doc]

Thanks for the data. I would say that there is a first time for everything.

[the_doc]

I am not on the GOPe tree. I am just not a populist, either.

[the_doc]

The GOPe puppetmasters are despicable. But Cruz is smarter and more principled than they are. I think they will discover that they have no bus to throw him under.

(In all seriousness, thanks for your opinion, anyway.)

[the_doc]

Good post. I just can’t see Cruz mending fences with Trump. Cruz is very much unlike Carson.

[Mom MD]

Vote for Trump? I hope I can hold my nose long enough to pull the lever. Support him? The planned parenthood loving, soft on abortion, transgender bathroom supporting tax raising new york liberal? NO.

[Mom MD]

The establishment is running to get on the trump train right now. So that makes Trump the establishment candidate by your reasoning.

[the_doc]

If the GOP defies the will of the primary voters, the already strained relationship will break completely.

The problem with this comment about "the will of the primary voters" is that it appears that about 60% of the Republican voters don't want Trump.

We have a mess on our hands, FReeper FRiend. Nominating Trump could be worse than not nominating him--not to mention getting clobbered by Hillary for nominating him.

(I blame Trump for this mess, because while I applaud his dismantling of the GOPe, he has gone way too far on his blustering, profane Alinskyite ego trip--almost singlehandedly causing this horrible Party rift and also ruining his own national electability.

Trump can pivot on a dime and probably placate the GOPe guys, but that two-faced gift on his part will WORSEN his standing with Constitutional conservatives.)

[Lakeshark]

I agree.

Cruz is nothing like Carson.

Carson is accomplished, honest, and likable.