A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
I don't think it's a huge secret that a large swath of the GOP electorate isn't terribly thrilled with the remaining crop of Republican candidates. Which is not to say that they won't ultimately find one of the remaining candidates acceptable and happily support them, but there's a lot of good candidates that didn't run. With all the ups and downs of this primary a lot of people have talked up the possibility of a brokered convention and, while that's a real possibility, it's not a likely one. Unless...
Over at PJ Media, Zombie throws out an interesting idea--what if GOP voters cast their votes in such away as to ensure there is a brokered convention? He's calling this "Operation Equilibrium" and it would work something like this:
When the Republican presidential primary is held in your state, vote for whichever candidate has the fewest number of delegates up to that point. If the guy in last place is particularly distasteful to you, then vote for the guy in second-to-last place, or third-to-last. But whatever you do, vote against the current leader.
I'm skeptical that this would work, mainly because people are moved to go to the polls generally out of allegiance to a candidate. Getting primary voters to vote in lockstep for A Candidate to Be Determined seems difficult. Then again, there's some evidence that Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos in the 2008 Democratic primary may have actually caused some nontrivial amount of mischief. So I'm curious to see what everyone else thinks--is this a gimmick or a potential game changer?
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Mar '11
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
After the first ballot of a brokered 1860 convention, Lincoln had 102 votes to 173 for Seward, 50 for Cameron, 49 for Chase and 48 for Bates. On the second vote Lincoln's count swelled to 181 with 184 for Seward. It wasn't until the third vote that Lincoln scooped up the 232 votes needed to win the nomination.
That turned out okay, now didn't it. Unless you're one of those rabid Libertarian Lincoln haters, of course, but the rest of us are quite pleased.
Feb '12
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
Yes Gus, but they didn't have the primary system back then. Back then the party had real power and control over the politicians and the candidates. That is no longer the case. That's why all the talk of the "establishment" trying to pull something over on the conservative base is so ridiculous. There is no party establishment with the power to stop a conservative candidate from running and winning the nomination. No good conservative candidate stepped forward this time, period. That is all that has happened and the "establishment", whatever that is, has nothing to do with it.
With regards to Mark Belling Fan's point, in elections where there are more than two candidates and no one achieves a majority, often times sensible systems then have a run off of the top two vote getters. If this thing does get contested, that better be what they decide to do at the convention. The bottom two delegate winners should release their delegates and the top two get to make the case or cut the deals they can to win the freed delegates. It is the only course that makes sense.
Edited on February 24, 2012 at 7:25pmMar '11
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
If no candidate can muster the needed delegates during the primaries then I consider a brokered convention a big, red, reset button. Establishment or not, if that happens we will see who has the power to pull delegates into orbit and who gets flung out into the abyss.
Sep '10
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
MJMack:
With regards to Mark Belling Fan's point, in elections where there are more than two candidates and no one achieves a majority, often times sensible systems then have a run off of the top two vote getters. If this thing does get contested, that better be what they decide to do at the convention. The bottom two delegate winners should release their delegates and the top two get to make the case or cut the deals they can to win the freed delegates. It is the only course that makes sense. · 6 minutes ago
Edited 0 minutes ago
This is how I always figured it would work.
Wouldn't an "outsider" have to make a pro-active plea for it to go down any other way? Does anyone see Daniels or Rubio making such a plea?
May '10
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
Wasn't this Sarah Palin's point when she said people in SC should vote for Newt? It looks to me like that's roughly what the Republican primary electorate is already doing.
Oct '10
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
Doug Lee
Then who? I agree, but IMHO, there is no one that large numbers of people are salivating for. The closest would be Sarah Palin, but I think she's done a pretty good job of taking herself off of the list.
EDIT: Based on comments from a similar post on the member feed, I have the following list of potentials:
Anyone else to add to the list? If you could get one of these people nominated, would you go for a brokered convention? · 4 hours ago
Edited 4 hours ago
Following Fredosphere's suggestion, Bobby Jindal.
Mar '11
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
PJ
Wasn't this Sarah Palin's point when she said people in SC should vote for Newt? It looks to me like that's roughly what the Republican primary electorate is already doing. · 1 hour ago
Ssshhh! You aren't allowed to attribute any sort of influence to Palin. It's in the CoC fine print, under conspiracy theories.
Nov '11
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
A more legitimate way to get to a contested / brokered convention would be to ask voters to vote for a favorite son/daughter, someone who has previously put their name on the ballot.
Wow, that sounds like old-time politics.
Oct '10
Re: A Blueprint for a Brokered Convention?
Operation Counterweight. (vote for the most conservative senate candidate in the primaries to counter romney and the RINOS.)
Operation Hilarity.(Vote for Santorum where there are open primaries)
Operation Equilibrium.