For some reason, Donald Trump and his insane message is resonating with Republican voters, giving him a sizable lead over his competition Ted Cruz and John Kasich. However, Trump may not actually be able to get the nomination outright.
The Republican National Convention requires that a nominee obtain 50% of the delegates plus one to clinch the nomination. That means Donald Trump needs 1,237 pledged delegates. Since he currently sits at 739 with Cruz and Kasich making some advances (okay, mostly Cruz), he may fall short when the voting is done.
What does that mean? Well, pledged delegates are supposed to vote for their pledged candidate during the first round of voting at the RNC. If a majority is not reached, more rounds of voting will take place, with some of the delegates becoming unpledged. That means they can vote for whomever they want.
A type of underhanded tactic has been taking place behind the scenes, one which Trump was ignorant to until recently because, well, he doesn’t know jack about politics. But Ted Cruz and GOP officials (who hate Trump, and who hate Cruz only slightly less) have been trying to plant loyalists in the delegates being selected to go to the convention.
It’s a smart tactic that Trump hadn’t been engaged in until recently. If some of Trump’s delegates become unpledged, they can jump ship over to Cruz’s or someone else’s side and steal away the nomination. Some wonder if enough damage has already been done to possibly steal the nomination away in a contested convention.
Some of these behind-the-scenes activities taking place in certain states may really stack the deck against Trump. For instance, in Connecticut, while candidates can nominate their own delegates, final say goes to the state party. In other states like Wisconsin, some delegates are selected by the state party leaders, while others are nominated (but not selected outright) by the candidates. Rules like this could aid in stealing away a Trump nomination.
Trump, in an effort to stem the bleeding, has sent Ben Carson to North Dakota in an attempt to make sure some Trump loyalists are being selected to go to the convention in July. Trump didn’t seem to find this whole process very entertaining. He said on ABC’s “This Week”:
“I have a guy going around trying to steal people’s delegates. This is supposed to be America, a free America. You know, welcome to the Republican Party. What’s going on in the Republican Party is a disgrace. I have so many more votes and so many more delegates. And, frankly, whoever at the end, whoever has the most votes and the most delegates should be the nominee.”
Yeah well, that’s not how it works. You need a majority. Also, why would you send Carson to do anything? Not only does he look like he might just fall asleep and forget what he was supposed to be doing there, his monumentally terrible endorsement of you shouldn’t inspire confidence in him.
But we shouldn’t expect Donald Trump to think things through, should we?
Featured image by Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.
