Saturday, February 18, 2012

The "Contested" Convention


Some people may remember the hysteria preceding the 1964 GOP convention that nominated Barry Goldwater. The establishment Republicans tried to recruit William Scranton, the Governor of Pennsylvania, to take Barry on. Rockefeller had mortally wounded himself with the quaint idea of a divorce. The GOP feared exactly what happened--the largest landslide in our history.

Today, there are real nervous people who say that the weaknesses of Mitt Romney have become more obvious as the months go by. Most claim that Romney "will find some way to win Michigan" but even so he will be damaged goods. Santorum or Gingrich would trigger a massive Obama win.

Republican establishment types have recently been running the numbers for the delegate counts and have discovered that under the best scenarios none of the candidates would have enough to win it outright. This fantasy game went on among Democrats in 2008, trying to figure out how Hillary Clinton could beat Obama at the Convention. Here the numbers game is about finding a viable candidate.

As I've written, the deadlines for most of the primaries are long gone and it seems the GOP is stuck with whom they have. But GOP operatives in the Beltway have come up with a plane. They note that the deadlines for some primaries are still out there--California (March23),Montana (March 12), New Jersey (April 2), New Mexico (March 16) and South Dakota (March 27).

The idea would be to recruit a new candidate to force a "contested convention". The thinking is that one can't have a brokered convention because no one is in charge.

The idea probably is another election year fantasies but it is not the smell of napalm in the morning but panic.


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