1854 poster: “Uncle Sam’s youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing.”
Don Surber says:
Trump won. Get over yourself
Republican Governor Rick Scott of Florida stood up like a statesman today and said what had to be said.
Trump won.
Donald Trump is ahead by 250 delegates with about 1,000 delegates left to pick. If he gets half those delegates, he is at 1,200 — 37 shy of a majority. The party will not deny him the nomination if he is ahead by 100.
The neocons at National Review and the Weekly Standard should suck it up and admit defeat. In the marketplace of ideas, they lost. Their utopian ideal failed. Americans no longer want to invade countries. It is time for the Robert Taft wing of the party to steer the party — and the nation — back to the middle.
Sorry, Don. There seems to be some confusion here.
Trump won a plurality of delegates. That’s all. He has been getting the most votes of any individual candidate in a field of 17 GOP candidates that gradually reduced itself to 4. But he has nothing resembling a majority. He certainly has not won.
In order to secure the nomination, he needs 1237 votes. Trump actually has 678. Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich together have 718.
Donald Trump has done well at winning the most individual support in a big-field-of-candidates race, but now things are changing. It is becoming a Donald Trump or Not-Donald-Trump (meaning Ted Cruz) proposition. If all the Not-Donald-Trump Republicans come together (and they have to. It is either that or swallow the indigestible, unelectable Donald Trump), then Trump loses.
Moreover, the primary contests are moving West, out of the Rust-Bucket East and the Fever-Swamp South to the American West, natural Cruz country.
Don argues that all Trump has to do is get half the remaining delegates to be up to 1200. But Trump is a natural minority candidate. His support is coming from cross-over democrats, from low information voters (who previously voted for Obama), and from (alas!) our loudest-Paleocon-in-the-bar lunatic Nativist fringe. (I like Ann Coulter, but, really! Ann…) Trumplestiltskin has a ceiling. That ceiling has been reliably less than 50% so far, and I think it is going to stay that way.
Trump will arrive at the convention with some low 40% of the delegate count, blustering and making threats about Trumpshirts rioting if he isn’t automatically given a majority. And the Republican Party is not going to listen. The polls show Trump losing to Hillary (who could probably be beaten by your average box turtle), and the Republican Party wants to win. Republican political operatives often look like the Washington Generals playing the democrats as the Harlem Globetrotters, but even GOP operatives ought to be able to deal with the Convention maneuverings of a spoiled narcissistic millionaire whose preferred political counselor is a three-way dressing mirror.