Last night, Democrat Hillary Clinton all but locked in her party’s nomination for President. On the Republican side, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, after losing his own state, suspended his campaign, leaving Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich in the race against Trump. While Kasich has a statistically impossible road to the nomination, he came through with a crucial victory in his home state, placing a major stumbling block in front of Donald Trump’s march to the nomination.
In order to secure the nomination, Trump needs to win almost 60% of the remaining delegates between now and the Republican convention in mid-July.
Those in the “Never Trump” movement, including moderate “Establishment” Republicans and conservative stalwarts, have an impossible choice before that convention. It’s somewhat unlikely that Trump will win enough delegates in order to secure the nomination, necessitating some sort of brokered convention, with backroom deals negotiated in order to hand someone the nomination.
Republicans will be faced with a choice: make peace with Trump and try to control him or subvert the will of the electorate based on Trump coming up just a few delegates short of the nomination.
If Republicans think the former is possible, they are deluded.
This week Donald Trump campaigned with Sarah Palin and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Palin’s husband Todd, while she was on the campaign trail, was hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after a serious accident. On the stump, Trump mocked the husband of a woman who endorsed him for President and left her husband’s side in serious condition to campaign for him. Christie wasn’t safe either. Trump joked that Christie was an “absentee governor,” a sore spot during a week that Christie was being lambasted in his local press for skipping a policeman’s funeral in order to stump for Trump.
During Trump’s victory speech, two men were visible on stage with him: his son and his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. One son recently appeared on a white supremacist radio show, the latter has been in the news this week for assaulting a reporter covering the Trump campaign, who ended up filing charges with the local police. The Trump campaign’s response to the assault was to stand with the campaign manager, giving him the honor of appearing next to the candidate on stage, and Trump himself personally thanked Lewandowski during his victory speech just a week after the assault.
Never before has a candidate who won more than nine states not secured the GOP’s nomination for President. Trump has locked down almost twenty states four months before the convention. There is a clear desire on the part of the Republican electorate for a Trump Presidency. From how Trump has conducted his campaign, however, it’s clear a Trump candidacy would also be the end of the Republican party as we know it. Republicans, “Establishment” and conservative grassroots alike, have to make peace with the fact that if they allow a Trump candidacy, there is no controlling where it leads. If they don’t allow Trump to secure the nomination despite an overwhelming (though not quite sufficient) amount of Republicans choosing it, they may lose any semblance of legitimacy. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
