Now, what happened in Colorado is, I'm sorry to say, it's not a trick. What happened in Colorado is right out in the open.... It's no secret that Colorado was gonna have a convention and they're gonna choose their delegates before the primary.... Nobody talked about it.... So it was left to be discovered by people who didn't know. And it turns out that people on the Trump campaign didn't know....Fine... up to a point. And the point is: Will Cruz's winning get him all the way to the nomination? If his approach doesn't get him to 1237, where will it leave him? He may prevent Trump from getting to a majority and get the party to an open convention, but then what is his argument that the delegates should vote for him? Why should the man with the second-most delegates get the nomination? Because he was so sharp and aggressive in figuring out how to play the non-democratic part of the game?
Every business has its rules and laws, bylaws, and specific ways that you have to climb the ladder of success..... So I don't see Ted Cruz lying and cheating his way to the convention. I see a lot of hard work. I see some people who know what they have to do, given where they are. They're in second place in both the vote count and the delegate count. They're serious about winning.... They have made themselves fully aware of how the process works, and they've been out working it for quite a while. They went into Louisiana where Trump scored a massive win but they've come out of there with many more delegates than, by appearances, they should have....
There's a way you get to the top in politics. People who don't like certain rules may call them loopholes and may say somebody's cheating. But that's just people using the rules as they have been written....
Whether you call that cheating or not — and Trump will be encouraging us to think that it is cheating (or at least highly unfair and undemocratic) — it's the dirty work that's going to leave him looking unappealing to the American public. Trump is unappealing too, which mutes the horror Cruz would otherwise inspire. But once Cruz has done the nasty work of blocking Trump, how is he supposed to continue winning? He's working as a tool now. What's his clever scheme to become something other than a tool?
He won't be able to present himself in democratic terms, since he will have progressed along the nondemocratic route, playing the weird behind-the-scenes game that Trump failed to discover or wouldn't deign to play. At the open convention, Trump can say: I played it straight. I appealed to the people. I got the most votes. What can Cruz say? I was dumbfoundingly devious?
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«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 206 of 206Because the delegates committed to the candidates that got the third-most, fourth-most, fifth-most, sixth-most, seventh-most, eighth-most and ninth-most delegates don't like the guy who got the most delegates and would rather vote for the man who got the second-most delegates.
Trump "won" a lot of primaries but didn't get a majority in any of them. Pluralities don't win nominations. Majorities do.
Says the commentor. I say it is uninformed BS. The readers will decide.
Some people would be stunned to learn that a lot of Presidents didn't win on the first ballot. Hell, Lincoln's strategy wasn't to be the #1 guy..
I guess I have to point out again that primaries and today’s method of choosing candidates are vastly different than what pertained in Lincoln’s day. Primaries did not exist until 1910 at the earliest and that was only one state, Oregon. The primaries as we know them did not exist until 1968. Here’s Wikis take:
The impetus for national adoption of the binding primary election was the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention.
http://tinyurl.com/j5k2w3c
Show me an example after 1968 of where a candidate with the most primary wins and the most votes at a GOP convention was denied the nomination because they did not have a majority and you may have a point. Examples from a hundred years ago are meaningless. Do your homework, read the history and try to offer examples that are relative to today’s situation.
"ALL I can say is that millions of GOP primary voters disagree with the commentor. He doesn’t think it’s important but they do."
This is a reflection of their own xenophobia and/or fear and hatred of the chimera of "illegal immigrants," a nonexistent boogeyman intended to be feared, and manufactured by those who use such scapegoatery as a tool to divide those who have more in common than not. Which is to to say, immigrants--legal and otherwise--who struggle in this country working for poor pay at back-breaking jobs have much in common with American workers who see their own jobs vanishing in the new world order planned and being created by Chase, Goldman Sachs, General Electric, Monsanto, and the cohort of corporate tyrants who run the world, (less and less indirectly all the time). The wealthy look down on working Americans as being no better or different than immigrants--legal or illegal: we're all just potential slaves, resources to be used and thrown away once all value has been extracted.
@grackle: I appreciate your pointing out the irrelevancies of conventions run under different rules in years past. However, convention rules can be rewritten or repealed (especially this year): Both the DNC and the RNC are feeling existential angst. I expect them to collude and to do whatever they please. There is simply too much money and established influence to go away.
Show me an example after 1968 of where a candidate with the most primary wins and the most votes at a GOP convention was denied the nomination because they did not have a majority and you may have a point.
I cannot name a time when the candidate with the most primary wins and most votes didn't actually have a majority.
Which doesn't indicate tons of support for Trump.
This is so amazingly beyond stupid, Ann, that I'm really disappointed in you.
1: We've got two candidates who will have won in many states, and have the vast majority of the votes between them.
We've got everyone else, who's results are basically statistical noise.
You go with one of "the winners" (which in this case is two people, Trump or Cruz), or you tell the voters to "F off" (in which case they'll rightly return the sentiment in November).
2: Cruz is working his butt off and competing. Trump is sitting on his butt whining that the other guy is working too hard. One of those people de3serves nothing but contempt, from and decent human being.
And it's not Cruz
So, how is that big meanie Ted Cruz "cheating"? Let me count the ways:
1: He's got a campaign with people whose job it is to find out the rules
2: Once they find out the rules, those nasty cheaters contact Cruz supporters, and make sure those supporters know the rules relevant to them ("If you want to vote for Ted, you need to go to this meeting and vote / you need to file this form and then show up at this meeting and announcing you're running for delegate as a Ted Cruz supporter").
3: They talk with people, looking for Cruz supporters who will be at events, and then put together lists of Cruz supporters
4: This is a really big one: those nasty Cruz cheaters then print out correct lists of who to support, rather than passing out error filled lists that have information for other candidates' supporters on them!
All this is really shocking! Clearly Ted Cruz is a bad person and a nasty rotten cheat!
For that matter, clearly he's not a real American, because real Americans don't follow the rules, work hard, and succeed. Just ask Donald Trump with his four bankruptcies, and illegal immigrant construction workers and H1B visa bartenders and waitresses ("doing jobs that Americans won't do for the Donald!")!
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