At the end of the 4 days, they will nominate Trump.
But if he doesn’t have the majority of delegates entering the convention, it will be an ugly last gasp played out on national television. Which will stand in strong contrast to the convention in Philly showing a united party behind everything that Trump is against…Women, minorities, justice and yes…I can say this without being corny…the American way.
Trump will either have to spend some weeks/months after the convention trying to win back republicans he has pissed off, or he will have to write them off entirely. Either situation is a killer for him in a General against Hillary.
No way would Cruz accept being Trump’s running mate. If Trump did win with Cruz as veep Cruz would spend all his time trying to figure out a way to get Trump impeached so Cruz could be president.
Contrary to Josh Marshall, I predicted on these pages last Fall that Ryan would likely be the nominee. This is about running the most powerful capitalist country in the world, not some game for a ego-bloated real estate/hospitality business entreprenuer, or a far right personality disorder like Cruz. The capitalist class made clear enough in 2014 that they really don’t want another Democrat in the White House for now. We’ll see if Cruz and Kasich can garner enough delegates to throw it into the convention (it sounds like big money is behind Kasich). If Trump can’t win on the first ballot, he’s history - and then I suspect Ryan becomes the “compromise” conservative candidate. After all, he’s stood above the fray and has experience running for the White House. And he’d make a good candidate against Hillary.
Well that should go over real well with Trump’s rabid supporters. It would be in political suicide for Ryan when Trump splits the vote, takes his followers with him and hands the Presidency to Hillary.
Asked about the possibility in an interview with CNBC, Ryan said, “I haven’t given any thought to this stuff,”
“And by the way, let me tell you more about what I haven’t been thinking about.”
“People say, ‘What about the contested convention?’ I say, well,
there are a lot of people running for President. We’ll see. Who knows,”
the Wisconsin congressman said.
I expect the Rrepublican convention this year will be epic no matter what. If it’s a genuine contested convention where they try to deny Trump the nomination, obviously no further explanation is needed. If he comes in with not quite a majority and they accede to him as the nominee, there’s bound to be some weird shit going down in the back rooms nd a lot of open grumbling. And however he gets the nomination, even with a majority going in, you’re going to see a whole lot of pols giving speeches through gritted teeth trying to keep up their game faces, and possibly at least an attempt by the #NeverTrump crowd to try and stop him, along the lines of what the Ron Paul delegates tried to do last time.
Had Ryan run initially I think he would have been a solid candidate. I agree that the plutocrat class definitely wants a GOP president to replace Scalia with someone even more compliant to their wishes and a government that will continue God’s work of putting the rabble in their place. However, if Trump is proving one thing, it’s that they don’t have as much control as they believe they do.
If there is going to be a consensus candidate from the convention it will have to be Kasich, though, not Ryan. Ryan has no national organization or fundraising apparatus and would need to start building it immediately if he is either to make a credible run OR be in a position to help down ticket. The party could start building that for him, but it wouldn’t escape notice, and would probably result in either a Trump surge or a Trump-Cruz alliance. On the other hand, Kasich actually has many of these things in place, and he is likely to go into the convention with 20% of the delegates. Even so, he’d be crushed by a the party revolt if the leadership installed his 20% over the 40-48% Trump brings to the convention.
