The latest polls in Wisconsin are showing Ted Cruz is likely to beat Donald Trump in tomorrow’s primary there. Many doing the math propose that a big loss in Wisconsin, which is a winner-take-most state for Republicans, could put the finish line out of reach for Trump. If Trump can’t win the 1,237 delegates necessary to outright win the Republican nomination…Ted Cruz may be able to lock up the nomination in a contested convention.
It’s no secret that the GOP Establishment openly opposes Trump being their nominee, they see him as a catastrophe in a General Election for their party, their hold on power in Congress and their domination of the Supreme Court. As Mitt Romney has announced, their goal is to deny Trump the amount of delegates he needs to win the nomination in the primary process then at the convention, anoint someone else the nominee.
Ted Cruz thinks that it will be him. He has been gaming the process of selecting delegates who support him so that after the initial convention vote when Trump would come up short on delegates, Trump’s pledged delegates would be released and able to elect Cruz. As the primaries have confirmed, Cruz is full of dirty tricks and sneaky schemes so stealing a contested convention is right up his slimy alley.
Though greatly disliked by the GOP Establishment as well, Cruz has been receiving support from them and the party as part of an anti-Trump effort…which isn’t the same as wanting Cruz to be the nominee.
So once Trump is no longer a threat, after losing the first vote at the convention, might their incentive to support Cruz suddenly disintegrate? Would Cruz consolidate support or once they’ve successfully aborted the Trump nomination (I thought they were against abortions?), might they then turn to someone else?
That GOP propaganda machine, Politico, is floating a dubious story today about the gearing up of a campaign to draft Paul Ryan into being the Republican nominee. Mitt Romney has been typically bad at presenting a poker face, he seems anxious and hopeful that the GOP would ascribe to the definition of insanity by trying the same thing in nominating him again and expecting a different result.
And what about John Kasich? Could a candidate who can’t win any state but his own, is light years behind the other candidates in delegate count and is despised by the core GOP voters, convince the party to fall in line behind him?
Trump and Cruz are surprisingly in step with each other on one campaign matter, insisting that the rules of the GOP convention stay in place from last time, which require any candidate to be voted on at the convention to have won majorities in at least 8 states in the primaries. In other words, they are singing in harmony that Kasich should not even be eligible to receive votes at the convention and should drop out now since there is no way for him to become the nominee in any case.
Kasich, who has built his campaign on denying reality (taking personal credit for everyone else’s work who’s in the vicinity of him and cloaking his religious extremism ), is denying this reality too. With Trump and Cruz opposing any change to the 8 state rule, there is zero chance for it to be changed and for Kasich to even receive a vote for the nomination but he is too deluded to accept that. However, it is good for America that he stays in the race and dilutes the voting pool, taking votes away from Cruz especially and keeping the race as tight and hostile as it is to maximize damage to whichever of them will be the ultimate winner of the nomination.
Of all the possibilities, if Trump doesn’t win the 1,237 delegates in the primaries or, accounting for the many undeclared delegates (some states have undeclared delegates and those won by Rubio and others who dropped out are instantly changed to undeclared upon the exit of candidates from the race), if Trump doesn’t add enough delegates by the date of the convention, which outcomes are the most likely and in what order?
Taking a stab at it, here are possible scenarios ranked by likelihood if Trump doesn’t have 1,237 delegates when the GOP convention starts:
- Cruz wins the nomination in a subsequent vote.
- Trump rallies together enough delegates in a subsequent vote to win the nomination.
- The GOP Elite handpick someone like Paul Ryan or even Mitt Romney, a Republican who hasn’t even competed in the primary, to be their nominee and strong arm delegates to do as they say (the resulting civil war in the GOP led by Trump and Cruz supporters would be spectacular).
- John Kasich shares footage at the convention of a pig flying and is handed the nomination.
Tomorrow’s primary in Wisconsin could be a remarkable turning point for the Republican party. It’s possible that there will be a surprise and Trump could do better than expected, keeping him on track to win the nomination in the primary. But if the results match the polling of the last week and Cruz beats Trump, denying him an amount of delegates he needs to win the nomination, the most despised Republican politician by Republicans could end up the likely nominee of their party.
Stay tuned..same batty party…same batty time.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/sanders-clinton-not-qualified-to-be-president-221666
For what it’s worth, I don’t like this one little bit. I’m at the point where I don’t care who is the ultimate nominee for the Democratic Party as long as they stop the GOP nut jobs! I was never a huge supporter of Hillary and I think that Bernie is a breath of fresh
air and has had a large influence on the paradigm of the change that is so desperately needed. But this is getting abhorrent.
And this comes after an article on March 15 from The Nation saying relax Bernie’s supporters will support Hillary……..:
http://www.thenation.com/article/relax-bernies-supporters-will-support-hillary-if-shes-the-nominee/
If they both don’t stop this, it is exactly the the kind of material that the GOP will use in their ads and the gullible will take it all in!!
I thought that they were not going to stoop to that level and gave both credit for being more intelligent.
STOP IT PLEASE! Neither of their supporters will support the eventual nominee if they keep this up. SIGH!
With the incredible momentum that Bernie has generated among all ages, which was so unexpected and quite frankly fantastic, what I am afraid of is that if Bernie does not win the nomination, a large number of his supporters will feel so let down and not be able to process the loss. This could result in not voting at all and handing the WH to the “real” devils. No matter what a mess the GOP make at their convention, they will come together to WIN!
Fergie, well said and very appreciated.
I do think that the level of the Dems’ discourse dropped this week and unnecessarily so.
Since we regard Trump as looking like a 5 year old for using the, “He started it!” excuse, I wouldn’t allow Bernie to get off the hook using that either and credit to him that he wouldn’t try to. Instead, he toook it back and declared today that Hillary is qualified to be President. Disappointing though that Hillary still won’t say the same of Bernie, just that he would be better than any of the Repubs but then so would a case of pneumonia.
Hillary’s camp has been hammering him with this misguided new “Disqualify, Defeat then Try to Unify” campaign against Bernie but he shouldn’t have given in to returning the same kind of hyperbole. Had he responded just by saying that no one should question his qualifications who has made so many errors in judgement, he could have punched back without stooping to her level. So, neither of them are excused for dropping to this.
I will say that Hillary’s abuse of throwing the “sexist” card at anything Bernie says that she doesn’t like is getting tired and insulting to women who have to deal with real sexism (and insulting to the many men and women who are feminists but believe Bernie is the better candidate).
And now for something completely different…Bad Lip Reading does Ted Cruz…yes, it’s very funny!
😆 😆 😆
“I need a bogel for the glotch”.
Jordan the centipede taught me a card trick! I just love to Twerk!
Those folks are pretty funny. 😉
Disqualify Bernie?
Here comes that old, rusty kitchen sink that sunk like a stone in 2008′.
Remember the “As far as I know”?
Hillary Clinton Stokes False Rumors about Obama’s Faith
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFREDHB-nQ
My question for Hillary. Are you???
—-
Washington Post: “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/06/clinton-questions-whether-sanders-is-qualified-to-be-president/
She just can’t help herself. It seems like Hillary’s natural manner is to be harsh and cutting except when it seems advantageous to present a kinder and gentler image.
As happened when Bernie first surged, now that he’s surging again she’s reverted back to the dishonest inferences.
As you point out, she did this same evasive type of response to avoid disputing the lie that Obama was a Muslim. There is a track record with her using this kind of mud slinging.
That said, do you think it was wise for Bernie to respond in kind, using the phrase that Hillary wasn’t “qualified to be President”?
It’s got to be hard to get sucker punched again and again by Hillary but responding in kind I think is counter productive.
BTW, Hillary and Bill are closely connected with the owner of The Daily News, the hit piece/interview they did on Bernie and led to this was so obviously a dirty trick from the Hillary camp.
She’s like a 5 year old in rain gear during a storm, she can’t stop jumping in the gutter. But Bernie shouldn’t join her there.
I agree that he should not have responded in kind but I imagine that the lie about him caring more about guns than the lives of the children who died at Sandy Hook must have infuriated him. After another obviously dishonest and dirty campaign, I hope that the voters will think seriously before casting their vote.
This is Hillary.
Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dY77j6uBHI
Just checked out the Twitter hashtag #HillarySoQualified which is intentionally ironic and saw a reminder of another horrible smear Hillary launched against Obama which stinks of Islamophobia. Remember this photo that Hillary’s 2008 campaign sent all around the media and in emails:
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And the title of the Guardian article with this photo Hillary promoted? “Clinton aides claim Obama photo wasn’t intended as a smear”.
Here’s the article that reminds us that this is Hillary and history just repeating itself…through slinging lies and mud:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/25/barackobama.hillaryclinton
Actually, I don’t remember seeing this picture as I took a break from blogging after being disgusted at the overt racism allowed on HP and the Clinton campaign’s persistent pushing of the non-story concerning Rev. Wright.
I didn’t hear Obama referring to her close connection to the nutters in C-Street.
This is what I expect from the gop but not from someone claiming to be the only true Democrat and “Progessive” in this race.
So Bernie is not a Democrat, and Hillary who takes huge amounts of money from Wall Street and the fossil fuel industry, knows what the American people want. Really?
Washington Post: “Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/06/clinton-questions-whether-sanders-is-qualified-to-be-president/
“We didn’t know anything about it”. Right!!
From your Guardian link.
Being just slightly more humble than Donald Trump, I appreciate that Nate Silver at 538.com today decided to agree with my post above:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ted-cruz-not-paul-ryan-would-probably-win-a-contested-convention/
So now that Trump has lost WI, it looks like neither he nor Cruz will get enough delegates to win the nomination in the primaries.
By definition, doesn’t that make them both losers?
It certainly does, AdLib!
The only winners tonight were Bernie and the Democrats of WI.
I think they’re both losers, in any regard.
Bernie Sanders just projected as winner in WI! Cheers to Cheeseheads!
Yay Bernie!!
Cheers to homemade cheeseburgers too!
Ad, will there be a Vox Pop afterwards? I’d love to see the comments.
Hey PPO, not a Vox but folks can post comments here on the night’s results!