Any chance that the increasingly likely nomination of Donald J. Trump as the Republican standard-bearer could successfully be contested lies somewhere between dim and dimmer. Looking at this summer’s Republican National Convention, in Cleveland (or, perhaps, looking away), only Trump is likely to come close to the 1,237 delegates needed to win. The two surviving challengers — Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich — are so far behind that a claim by either on the nomination would seem like theft.
The dream of the so-called Republican establishment is to block Trump simply by making it impossible for him to get the number of delegates he needs — a tactic that depends on Cruz or Kasich winning primaries that they’re unlikely to win (such as Tuesday’s in Arizona), or persuading uncommitted delegates (there will be some) to switch at some imagined “open” convention.
If that seems unworkable, if an improvised cabal made up of supporters of every losing candidate can’t succeed, there is talk of a third party, with candidates — former Texas Governor Rick Perry, anyone? — who might be less electable than Trump, at some cost to the party’s wounded brand.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (L) and Senator Robert Taft. Courtesy of Eisenhower Presidential Library.
The last successfully contested convention — complete with bitter floor fights — unfolded in 1952, when Republicans, meeting during a hot week in Chicago, picked their nominee. Then, as now, much depended not only on delegate arithmetic but also on party rules, and on men (no women had a role then) who had the political skills to use them. Because delegates were mostly chosen by party leaders, they could be persuaded to switch by other party leaders — an invitation to floor fights and challenges.
Heading into Chicago, Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the son of President William Howard Taft, was clearly in the lead. He had commitments from 500 of the 604 delegates needed to win the nomination. As Taft’s biographer Robert A. Patterson has pointed out, “Most of the 500 hated and feared the Eastern ‘Dewey wing’ of the party,” a reference to New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. He had twice run for president and twice lost, first to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1944, then to President Harry S. Truman, in 1948 — the latter still regarded as a legendary upset.
The candidate of the “Dewey wing” was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War Two, who arrived in Chicago with commitments from about 450 delegates.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2016/03/22/a-contested-convention-is-no-panacea-for-those-against-trump/?utm_source=Facebook
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