Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and William Tecumseh Sherman

GOP election night thoughts

Tonight’s (well, now yesterday’s) results lead Republicans down the path to a contested convention. With Trump needing to win between 57% and 59% of the remaining delegates depending on how Cruz does in Wisconsin, getting to 1237 is looking harder and harder for the Donald. If Trump wants to win, he’ll have to run the score up in New York and California.

If he doesn’t get to the magic 1237 delegates, then we will have the first contested convention since 1976, and the “delegate hunting” Cruz been doing this weekend will matter. See, the Republican National Convention isn’t as simple as many make it out to be. There are three main ways delegates are selected:

1. Delegates are elected support the candidate the delegate is allocated to.
2. Delegates are selected by a convention and there is no primary or caucus to allocate delegates. This is how North Dakota did it this weekend.
3. After primaries or the initial, election-day caucus allocating delegates, more caucuses are held to select the actual delegates going to the RNC.

The first way is the easiest. There are no surprises in the final delegate count, since all the delegates are supporters of the candidate. The candidate that wins the state popular vote wins the most delegates.

The second way is just as simple, but more dramatic. The voters don’t get a direct say, and delegates are elected at the convention base on affiliation. Cruz won the convention in North Dakota this weekend by using this method to elect his supporters. He “won” this weekend only technically, since the delegates can change their votes.

But the third way — well, the third way is a mess. In these states, the voting on election day the people do doesn’t elect delegates. It only allocates delegate spots to each candidate. Then the party has a series of conventions, where delegates elect delegates to go to the next convention. The state delegates elected at the state convention for the RNC will be bound to vote for a candidate at the convention, no matter if they support him or not.

So what’s now happening is Cruz is using his excellent ground organization to get his supporters out to the state conventions, because most delegates don’t always show up (especially supporters who are new to politics, like many Trumpites) and getting them to elect Cruz supporters to as many delegate spots as possible, even if they’ll have to vote for another candidate. Hold on to this thought that Trump and Kasich delegates may not actually want to vote for them if they had a choice — we’ll come back to it, because the delegate hunting can win Cruz the whole election.

When the voting process begins at the convention, the first ballot has a vast majority of committed delegates who have to vote how their state voted, except for unbound delegates (like the North Dakota delegation). But there can be even more delegates free to vote for whoever.

The RNC has no control over who delegates vote for and if they are committed or uncommitted. The states decide how long candidates have to stick with who their state voted for. So some states make it one ballot, others two. And then states have different rules for dropouts. Some allow delegates to vote for whomever after the candidate they are bound to releases the delegates, while others still require one or two ballots.

For the second round of voting, almost 60% of the previously bound delegates will be unbound. If there’s no victor on the second ballot, then the third ballot will have virtually everyone free to vote for who they want to.

With these crazy rules on releasing delegates, Cruz is looking to fill the delegations of every state with his supporters so they will elect him on the second or third ballot. And that may actually work.

But (because there seems to always be a but in this election), with unbound delegates comes the possibility of another outsider candidate.

And while Mitt Romney seemed to be positioning himself as the white knight to ride in and save the party, that role now seems to be falling to his former running mate and current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

And of course, like that election he had last October, Ryan says he doesn’t want the nomination.

He’s made the message relatively clear, reasserting his position to not run for the presidency multiple times over the past few months, and especially the past week or so.

But (like I said-another but), he has not yet made a Shermanesque statement.

In 1884, the Republicans tried to get Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman to run for the White House. He responded,

“I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”

The double rejection of nomination and serving became a standard in American politics. Perhaps the most famous modern-day use is President Johnson’s announcement in early 1968. He said,

“Therefore, I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

But Ryan has not yet made that statement. He’s only said that he “decided not to run for president.” That he thinks “you should run if you’re going to be president.” And that he wanted people to “get my name out of that” discussion.

But never a Shermanesque statement.

And it’s not like the technique he’s employing is unknown. Just look back to his own election as Speaker. He asserted multiple times that he would not want the job, and then he negotiated his way into it. This is a man who wants to lead, but still wants to appear humble.

While there are no polls out, he probably has a better chance at winning than Trump or Cruz. Both are despised, Trump just a bit more than Cruz. And Ryan is relatively untouched.

Yes, he may be the convention chair, but he can step down when the time comes. And the largely-silent-in-2016 billionaire Charles Koch is said to be pushing for Ryan to be the nomination behind the scenes.

So will the Republicans have Nominee Trump, Cruz, or Ryan?

But (there is one final but), this theory can disappear, because all of these rules can change. Because these are only the 2012 rules. The 2016 rule committee still has to meet and adopt new rules, which can just be the 2012 rules, or a whole new set of rules.

It would’ve all been over if the Donald had just won Wisconsin last night.

But now, anything is possible.