cartoon credit: niftyatheist.com
CNBC reports
(h/t Gateway Pundit):
Political
parties, not voters, choose their presidential nominees, a Republican
convention rules member told CNBC, a day after GOP front-runner Donald Trump
rolled up more big primary victories.
“The
media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That’s
the conflict here,” Curly Haugland, an unbound GOP delegate from North
Dakota [and a Republican convention rules member], told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on
Wednesday. He even questioned why primaries and caucuses are held.
Haugland
is one of 112 Republican delegates who are not required to cast their support
for any one candidate because their states and territories don’t hold primaries
or caucuses.
Even
with Trump’s huge projected delegate haul in four state primaries Tuesday, the
odds are increasing the billionaire businessman may not ultimately get the
1,237 delegates needed to claim the GOP nomination before the convention.
This
could lead to a brokered convention, in which unbound delegates, like Haugland,
could play a significant swing role on the first ballot to choose a nominee.
Most
delegates bound by their state’s primary or caucus results are only committed
on the first ballot. If subsequent ballots are needed, virtually all of the
delegates can vote any way they want, said Gary Emineth, another unbound
delegate from North Dakota.
“It
could introduce Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, or it could be the other candidates
that have already been in the race and are now out of the race [such as] Mike
Huckabee [or] Rick Santorum. All those people could eventually become
candidates on the floor,” Emineth said.
Former
Speaker John Boehner said Paul Ryan should be the Republican nominee for
president if the party fails to choose a candidate on the first ballot.
"If
we don't have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I'm for none of the
above," Boehner said at the Futures Industry Association conference here.
"They all had a chance to win. None of them won. So I'm for none of the
above. I'm for Paul Ryan to be our nominee."
Wading
into the GOP nominating battle for the first time since leaving office last
fall, Boehner said that "anybody can be nominated" at the convention
in Cleveland this summer.
The GOP establishment / elite (GOPe) couldn’t
breathe life into the Jeb! campaign. Then they tried to push Marco Rubio as the
Jeb! surrogate and that maneuver failed. Gov. Kasich’s job in the race was to
deprive any momentum candidate of the 66 Ohio winner-take-all delegates. Kasich
succeeded, but otherwise it is now a two-candidate race. Neither Cruz nor Trump
is acceptable to the GOPe. So we are seeing the GOPe preparing to force a brokered convention. And it's now out in the open.
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