Preface: I voted for Cruz, but know its over and he will not win the nomination.
Now that’s out of the way...why on earth is the delegate system a surprise to people?
For my entire life, the GOP primary electoral results have meshed with the desires of the ‘smoke filled back room’ of the party.
This year it doesn’t...neither Cruz or Trump was meant to win. That’s a good thing. But these two still have to battle it out within a rules structure that neither created. Cruz isn’t cheating...he’s playing by the convoluted rules put in front of him.
Some day soon, we will have to unify - likely behind Trump, I concede...I mean its 99% certain at this point. I hope we can all put the cheating accusations behind us and rally behind either of them, though.
“With Ball Ammunition, Lock and Load”!
“why on earth is the delegate system a surprise to people?”
It’s not that the system is a surprise, it is that in 2016, the system is at odds with the best interest of the people - selecting a nominee with the strongest possible popular consensus, the strongest mandate.
Remember, the whole reason for requiring a majority of 1237 delegates, rather than a mere plurality, is that a plurality is a minority, and is not perceived as a consensus, and does not carry a mandate.
An anonymous vote would clearly carry the strongest mandate, but it is obviously not possible to achieve that ideal. The next best mandate would be a super majority, say two thirds, but again this is too difficult to achieve. A simple majority is therefore a compromise - it is considered the strongest consensus that can be reasonably achieved in a presidential election context.
That, dear FRiends, is why ‘the system’ is set up with delegates who can change their vote in subsequent ballots. If they were never released from their initial pledge, then a plurality could never be resolved into a majority.
What is ironic, and even perverse, is when the system is abused - used at odds with its purpose of achieving the strongest reasonable mandate - which is what is happening in 2016.
Trump will probably exceed the 1237 majority on the first ballot, making all of this moot, but if he were to fall short by, say, 50 delegates, and a losing candidate like Cruz or Kasich, were to achieve the nomination in subsequent ballots in smoked filled rooms, or worse yet, a candidate that did not even participate in the primary process, like Ryan or Romney - would that be perceived as a consensus decision - a mandate? Certainly not. It would be a perceived as highway robbery!
If any Republican has a mandate in 2016, it is Donald Trump and no one else. If ‘the system’ produces a nominee other than Trump, that system is surely broken. I don’t think it will happen, but if it does, I think the voters will detach from the Republican Party, and rightly so.
I don’t think people fully understood the system until Trump brought it up and people started to take notice.