So David Brooks now says it’s not too late for the Republicans to choose someone other than Cruz or Trump — that is, someone other than a repulsive extremist or a rabid nationalist. (For Brooks, those are the characterizations of the two candidates that all respectable men and women share.)
And our friends David Schaefer and Donald Brand, on NRO, imagine that through the right kind of cooperation Republicans can still keep Trump from reaching a first-ballot victory and engineer a brokered convention that will nominate Paul Ryan. That cooperation, of course, includes letting Kasich win Ohio and Rubio Flordia, producing a critical mass of non-Trump and non-Cruz delegates.
Romney, meanwhile, may well be gearing up for a last-minute campaign as the honorable or safe alternative.
Both Trump and Cruz have warned, of course, that the attempt to deny the man with the most delegates the nomination (each, of course, imagines it will be him) will implode the party. They will not be denied.
The only way the non-Cruz and non-Trump faction can prevail is by winning a good number of primaries and caucuses. How likely is that?
Cruz thinks (and is probably right) that the one and only threat to his being the only non-Trump alternative is a Rubio surge based on Marco’s victory in Florida. And so Cruz is knocking himself out trying to prevent that, even if the result is Trump wins Florida.
Cruz sees Trump fading and is convinced he can beat him one-on-one and win on the first ballot. He’s more likely right than not. Trump thinks his best chance is to take Cruz on one-on-one. He might be right too, although that would mean, as I think, that his chance of being nominated is not very good.
At his point, Cruz, I guess, has more than a 50% chance of getting the nomination. Trump 25% or less. Someone else, 25% or less. A “contested” or brokered convention isn’t particularly likely.
Cruz above all is not for a brokered convention, because it almost surely wouldn’t nominate him. He brands himself as the one and only Trump alternative to attract voters he wouldn’t ordinarily get. But he’s not part of a generic stop-Trump movement. Presumably he would deal with Trump to get himself over the top, and nobody should be shocked by that. Now I don’t think he would make Donald his vice-presidential nominee. But that, after all, would be better than one other alternative.
One avoidable weakness among many in Rubio’s campaign is his admitting he’s gearing up for a brokered convention. That’s feckless establishment thinking. And Rubio’s strongest when he presents himself against business as usual.
There are many differences between Cruz and Trump, but it’s on immigration that they’re allied. And Cruz prides himself in being more extreme than Trump. With good reason. But, after all, they’re both extreme. In certain ways, both of their campaigns for the presidential nomination reflect a kind of anti-oligarchic, anti-cosmopolitan extremism in parts of the electorate that is at least newly intense. Said ”populism” reflects truth about Americans being slighted and left behind by the allegedly abstract imperatives of the global competitive marketplace that needs and deserves addressing. But neither Cruz nor Trump is anywhere near right for that. (And neither is Sanders.) Tough break that, after all, immigration is far from the real issue.
I think Trump and Cruz would both be very weak candidates in November. Choosing one of them pretty surely throws away an election that might well have been won.
Still, a brokered convention that denies them both would likely lead to a bigger defeat. Don’t be so clueless as to think, under today’s circumstances, that Ryan or Romney would be a unifying choice.
The above is a genuine effort to present the facts without inserting my personal views. I probably failed. I will say it’s too late for me to get what I want, as far as I can tell. I will also say I could be wrong.
Soon enough, Republicans in their voter-mandated leisure may have plenty of time to wonder why they got stuck with the choice between Cruz and Trump.