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Why the Convention Draft Would Not Be an Establishment Figure
Que Katy Perry
Sometimes, I write about stuff that I really know. Here, I’m not. I’m writing without particular knowledge, about betting markets, Nate Silver, and Jonah Goldberg being wrong. Since I think Nate and Jonah are, indisputably, the smartest guys in politics, I’m really asking for people to explain the errors in my thinking.
When pundits talk about a convention draft, they most often raise Speaker Paul Ryan as the example. This just seemed nuts to me (the odds have changed substantially while this is being drafted, but the larger point remains). In good ways and bad, Ryan is at the opposite end of the conservative Republican spectrum to Cruz and Trump. Fivethirtyeight used Ryan as an example of someone that Cruz could beat at the convention; I agree that Cruz could beat him, but I’m not sure why that would be the question. Likewise, Jonah conflated “convention draft” with “establishment figure.” It reminds me somewhat of the “if you’re not with Trump, you’re with Jeb!” claims from earlier in the cycle, except that Nate isn’t a Cruz supporter. PredictIt gave me a bet based on the claim that Ryan had a 15 percent chance to be the nominee, and Romney 5 percent. In the spirit of financial interest declarations, I took out bets against Kasich and Rubio, as well as Ryan and Mitt.
So I have two big questions. Firstly on why am I wrong, such that Ryan is the most likely convention pick if Trump and Cruz fail? Secondly, who do you believe to be the most likely candidates to prevail if Trump and Cruz do not? I should clarify that I’m neither stating that Trump will not make it on the first ballot, nor that Cruz will not make it on the second; there’s a reason that I’m not putting money either way on either of their candidacies. This is just about the “what if” of a potential third ballot. In normal election cycles when there is essentially no chance of a contested convention, there is still speculation about what candidates would emerge from such an outcome. This time, when a contested convention is likely, there appears to be little discussion of possible dark horse candidates.
The rest is my theory of the race, but you can skip it if you’d prefer to explain your draft picks than to read about mine.
Getting to the Drafts
If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, I don’t think he’ll be president. He’s not the second choice of any of the Kasich or Rubio delegates I’ve spoken to, and I’d be surprised if he were the second choice of many Cruz delegates. Cruz has apparently successfully worked the system in many states such that states that voted for Trump delegates will have anti-Trump delegates on the second and subsequent ballots. Perhaps more importantly, the RNC delegates are free agents from then on, too, which will reduce Trump’s total significantly. It seems likely that Trump supporters will behave poorly and sour his chances yet further. Even if Kasich came to a deal, I don’t think he could bring many of his delegates with him.
Should Trump fail on the first ballot, it’s an open question whether Cruz will have separated the superficial democratic outcomes (first ballot) from the more involved democratic outcomes (delegates) enough that he wins on the second. If Cruz doesn’t win on the second ballot, it’s still possible that he will win on a subsequent ballot; even if some other candidate comes forward — and it seems likely that any such candidate would capture a substantial portion of the non-Trump, non-Cruz delegates — Cruz could easily be more appealing to some Trump delegates than most others, and he wouldn’t need all that many Trump votes to add to his own. Set against that, many of his late-stage delegates are NeverTrump rather than CruzCrew. Still, it seems very possible that the third or subsequent ballots will see the race go to someone else.
Rule 40 is often presented as preventing this, but that is a misreading of what it says. To get on the ballot, you have to have the support of a majority of delegates from eight states. It should go without saying that if you do not have the majority of delegates from eight states, you’re probably not going to win anyway. You do not have to have the first ballot majority of delegates from eight states. The rule is not intended to select a candidate, but to mitigate the convention vandalism of the Ron Paul crowd. Anyone with a plausible chance should be on the ballot, but if you’re not on the ballot, there should be a limit to how much noise you can make.
The Draft
Unless there’s a massive effort underway to subvert the delegate selection away from both of the leading candidates — which would be hard to keep secret and does not appear to be public — the convention will be dominated by Cruz and Trump delegates, who would be unlikely to pick Ryan. The second most frequently voiced candidate is Romney. Romney and Ryan have both repeatedly disavowed interest in running, but their lack of interest is far from being the most important reason that they ain’t gonna make it. We don’t know the players yet. It seems likely that, if it makes it to the third round, Trump has somewhere between 1000 and 1150 second round delegates (his first round total minus RNC delegates, excepting the sole Trump-supporting RNC delegate, and the anti-Trump delegates elected as Trump delegates) and Cruz has somewhere between maybe 850 and 1236, while there are 168 RNC delegates and a variety of others (Rubio, uncommitted, Kasich, Santorum, etc.). Still, it seems logically necessary that any third or subsequent ballot outcome will involve a nominee who can draw some votes from multiple camps. For party unity, it still seems possible that this would involve an endorsement from candidates who had given up on being the candidate themselves.
Ideally, if it becomes clear that a candidate will win on an upcoming ballot, all the other candidates will endorse them, getting ahead of the story. I’ll continue to hope, although it would be kind of funny if the party ended up better at party unity this cycle than it did last time round.
Carly Fiorina
Pro: Fiorina is an exceptionally popular figure, particularly with the delegate class. She’s purchased a lot of influence through her presidency of the ACU. She’d be likely to beat Clinton. She’s tough, an outsider, and a business leader, which might help her gain some Trump delegates (she has at least one Trump delegate supporter, but I don’t know if my anecdotal evidence here represents something wider). She was the only candidate that the March For Life permitted to speak at their event, and she’s very good at those sorts of set piece speeches. She’s been perhaps Cruz’s finest surrogate, which should help her with Cruz delegates. She’s what passes for moderate in today’s GOP on policy: she was the biggest immigration squish and fence opponent in the primary, which should help her with Kasich delegates.
She’s well liked by the establishment and the support of her biggest fans (McCain, Graham, etc.) could easily make a difference with the RNC crowd. Ryan and Priebus both say, ridiculously, that the race should go to someone who filed for the primaries. Since this has never been the rule with previous contested conventions and only appears to make it more likely that we’ll have more ridiculous candidate filings in the future and hence more 17-40 man fields, I’m led to believe that either Priebus and Ryan are Fiorina fans or they know more about the hopes of the Santorum candidacy than I do.
On a personal note, Fiorina’s manager called me before the Kansas City meetup and left a lengthy voicemail; I gather he got my number off a Ricochet post. I’m not a Fiorina fan, and I never got round to getting back to him before I accidentally deleted the mail, but I was impressed by the level of hustle involved. I’ve had other activists say that they were contacted personally, too, which I haven’t heard from any other campaign.
Con: She hasn’t run a successful race, and it would be difficult for her to win the hardliners while appealing to the moderates. She didn’t particularly shine in the primary. Claims that she’s not invited to Georgetown cocktail parties are weaker than for other candidates.
Senator Mike Lee
Pro: For the Ann Coulter Trump supporters, Lee’s opposition to Trump might be less important than his having been clear and non-slippery in his opposition to amnesty. For Cruz delegates, Lee is almost certainly the most common second choice and was so way before he became the only senator to genuinely endorse Cruz (Graham’s constant stream of insults and total lack of positive statements make his “endorsement” less than genuine).
He’d receive the strong support of Senators Paul and Rubio. Of all the candidates, Lee seems most likely to represent the views of a plurality of voters as expressed in a large Trump/Cruz turnout while being acceptable to non-Trump, non-Cruz supporters. [While this was in draft, Senator Risch endorsed Cruz, but since few have heard of him, I don’t believe the analysis changed].
Con: We’re going to have a problem with conspiracy theorists after the convention because you don’t get to be a convention pick without actual conspiracies. How much worse does that become when the candidate is the second Mormon to be run in a row? Also, Lee has no experience running for anything outside Utah, which isn’t just among the reddest of states, but is also among the most idiosyncratic of states in its incestuous politics.
Perhaps more importantly, Mike Lee has been particularly relentless in his opposition to Trump; the success of any convention draft will depend in part on their ability to gain the endorsement of at least a portion of all the major factions and ideally the candidates. If Trump endorses Lee, I expect that the establishment will have given him something of very great value, and I’m not sure that the establishment likes Lee that much.
Rick Scott
Pro: He’d likely get just about every Trump delegate vote if Trump endorsed him. He’s got a record that appeals to many non-Trump supporters from just about every delegate block. If it looks like he’d be likely to win, I could imagine Cruz endorsing him. I don’t understand the Rubio-Scott relationship, and I don’t know how likely Kasich would be to endorse him, but I’d imagine that they’d both be supportive even if they didn’t explicitly endorse. While Lee seems like the closest thing to a unity candidate in substance, Scott seems like the most likely candidate to be a unity candidate in process, although Carly could get there.
Con: He endorsed Trump. Florida has a lot of crazy stories. He doesn’t have enormous name recognition, so the billion dollars that Clinton would have ready to drop on him would mean that there was a very real risk that he would be defined quickly and effectively as Trump-lite (where “lite” means “with an education that appears visible on TV, some sense of policy language, and such”).
I’d have thought that Governors Pence, Martinez, and — if Kasich does reasonably well — Hogan and Haley, were also more likely than Ryan. Who am I missing? Who shouldn’t be on the list? Why does anyone think that Ryan is plausible?
Published in Politics
Brent: you surely know by now that James considers Cruz to be evil, low-class and a congenital liar. That’s why he lumps him in with Trump. He sees them as having similar character flaws and for James these are the most important things. And Cruz isn’t really a conservative just a gadfly who pretends to be conservative.
You are probably right, if he whole-heartedly endorses a compromise candidate. Seems a mighty big if, though.
Well, at this point I’d guess Walker is the most probable former candidate to get a Cruz endorsement. And one could make the case that he dropped out for the good of the country before the race really got underway, so the voters did not really reject him – making a pointless technicality of Ryan’s criteria, of course. And Trump said he wouldn’t mind Walker as VP, so perhaps after losing the nomination he’d come around to Walker after savoring a Cruz defeat.
But I don’t really buy all that working out. I don’t think Ryan’s statement was intended to create other speculation. I think it was intended to tell us to get over it and get behind Cruz, if we want to stop Trump.
Yes, but I try to look past those things and hope/respect that he wrote a fine article in good faith to motivate conversation among the members.
Since Perry dropped out so long ago, it can be forgotten, especially in view of how much worse it got between Trump and some of the others.
@sabredance: My ex-husband is a descendant of Franklin Pierce. Once in 2nd grade, his sister raised her hand and told the teacher that, and the teacher said he was one of our worst presidents haha. So she stopped mentioning it.
I believe the Bushes are also related to Pierce.
This will probably be construed as conspiracy theory.
It has always been a mystery to me about Walker and Perry dropping out so soon. I realize their poll numbers weren’t strong and believe both campaigns were underfunded with a high initial burn rate. However, Perry had very strong PAC backing from Texas.
I have never understood how John Kasich was better funded or had a plausible path to the nomination that supposedly didn’t exist for Perry and Walker.
I wonder if someone at the RNC or some large donors pulled them aside and said “Look, the polls don’t give either of you a traditional path to the nomination, but after Cruz, Trump, Christie, Bush, and Rubio hack each other to pieces and piss off everyone and their Mom we are going to need some adult(s) with executive leadership and a track record to pick up the pieces and beat Hillary. Drop out now, lay low, be good soldiers, and be ready for Cleveland…”
LIKE!!!!!
I agree that Ryan’s statement wasn’t intended to create other speculation. If Ryan’s intent was to endorse Cruz, though, why do you think he didn’t endorse Cruz? I thought that Ryan’s statement was about Ryan, nothing more, and didn’t mention it because it doesn’t seem relevant to anything; I don’t think that Ryan is all that important a voice for all that many at the convention. The reason that I think it’s plausible that we could get to a contested convention is more about math than what anyone’s said.
I struggle to think of a Trump narrative for Walker. Why do you think that Cruz would prefer Walker to Fiorina? I mean, obviously, I’d be over the moon if it happened; it’s not that I’d prefer it to be Newt or somesuch, just that they seem to have worked harder at making themselves allies with lots of people. Walker worked hard at making friends with ALEC, but other than that he’s tried to cruise by on substance alone, and I don’t think that substance can cut it.
Okay, there. Now that I’ve calmed myself, I have to say I found it odd at the time too when Perry dropped out. I’d love to believe this is possible.
I’ve heard some back stories about why, but those only made marginal sense.
I get the frustration and anger this cycle and that it favors Cruz or Trump, but I still can’t justify why Kasich is holding town halls and Perry and Walker are on the couch.
I do appreciate that. Thank you, Brent.
I believe Ryan is the chair or co-chair of the convention.
We already have enough conspiracy theories (admitted contributor), ‘rigged’ processes (aka reading the rules), etc.
Paul Ryan is too much of a sound company man to do something foolish like appearing to have his thumb on the scale for Cruz when he has a leadership role at the convention.
Republican Tom Selleck.
He has name recognition.
People like him–no negatives.
He is an excellent speaker.
Democrats would be anxious to vote for Tom Selleck. Heck, Hillary would vote for Tom Selleck.
This idea needs to be taken seriously.
He has all of the media advantages that Trump had going into this race. Selleck is better known than Trump. And he hasn’t been tweeting foolishness for the last six months. Trump himself would laugh and wouldn’t mind losing.
Peace and good will would descend upon America.
I know my Ricochet friends are laughing at me, but I know this could work. It would give us four great years to get our act together and get ourselves out of this mess.
Perhaps not Tom Selleck, but Frank Reagan or Thomas Magnum? (I’d vote for Matthew Quigley…)
I like the way your mind works. (Not laughing!)
Perry never made it into the top tier. Kasich never sunk to the level of undercard. When Perry failed to qualify for the real debates for the second time, I think it made sense for him to call it a day.
He and Walker both had moderately large campaigns, and they would have had to retool and downsize to continue, and that just wasn’t a plausible outcome to happen in time for Iowa. Walker crashed in Iowa, and didn’t have a lot of future ahead of him. Perhaps more importantly, he had a day job.
It’s tremendously sad to me that the air got sucked out of the room, and that the room was so crowded, but it doesn’t seem hard to believe that it happened.
I think it’s a serious idea, although not necessarily a good one. See William Jennings Bryan above. I completely believe that Selleck could practice for, and pull off, an amazing speech. I could also believe that he might not be amazing in interviews when asked questions about policy, or that we’d find out about his teenage necrophilia (an example of a skeleton in the cupboard, not a conspiracy theory), or that it would otherwise turn out terribly. It might also turn out well; that’s the “excitement” of having a contested convention, much like placing one’s pension on “red” and spinning the wheel.
Makes sense.
I’m seeing it this way too. The excitement and possibilities of a blank slate.
Most likely – Trump on the first ballot.
Next up: Cruz on second or third ballot.
If Cruz limps into the convention barely holding Trump below 1237 but showing NY levels of Joementum in the closing primaries, and Trump still doesn’t get the nomination on the first ballot, I don’t see why you guys don’t think Mitt is the obvious fall back choice.
He was very P.O.’d at Jeb! for crowding him out at the beginning of the season, he hasn’t lost the fever.
He’s been vetted, and vindicated on a lot of his opposition to the Obama/Hillary policies.
He’s a boy scout compared to Hillary’s ethical exhaustion.
He’s the only guy the Repubs could unite around after the Trump/Cruz fiasco. He’d be like comfort food.
So @Brent first — I don’t know about Perry, but Walker’s early withdrawal made perfect sense to anyone familiar with Walker’s past career and Wisconsin politics. He dropped out of his first run for governor early when it became clear that was going nowhere, too. Dropping out early gave him a chance to rebound at home. He’s probably running for re-election at this point — if he’d hung on only to lose Iowa he’d be in no shape to do that. Maybe Ohio is OK with an absentee delusional governor, but Wisconsin wouldn’t be.
@James — Cruz probably owes Walker more than he does Fiorina. Besides Cruz is smart, and I think he’d calculate if you’re really going to throw someone in last-minute a governor who’s run three bitter elections — two under nearly nationalized scrutiny — is a better bet than a one-time Senate candidate with a few questions about her business record.
I think Ryan’s statement was mostly about Ryan. But he went out of his way to throw out the idea of any “white knight” candidate. That’s just logic, then — if you want to beat one candidate, you’d better unite around one of the others. He sees it as his job as Speaker — and convention chairman — to be neutral, and he’s probably right. But he’s said enough that it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to figure out what he’s thinking.
Sometime if you have an hour to kill, you should watch him play the part of Eisenhower in Countdown to D Day. He is an excellent actor.
I can just hear him: “Nah, we’re not going to build a 2,000-mile wall. [Big smile] But we will beef up security so we aren’t attracting terrorists, drug runners, and unaccompanied minors. [Big smile]”
I’d be thrilled. But there is a great deal of animosity toward him in the party.
I think Walker is a better candidate, too, but I don’t think that he excels at the sort of pulse quickening speech and rapier debate stuff that Cruz values. More importantly, when I’ve talked to people the Cruz campaign picked to be delegates, they’ve all really liked Fiorina, while the people who liked Walker tended to be way more establishment oriented people. Walker talks in specifics and details, producing plausible plans and delving deep into the weeds to produce compromises that result in conservative reforms passing. That’s not really the Cruz way. Walker “fights” in that he gets results. Carly “fights” in that she talks a lot about how much she “fights”. There’s the same conversion story, personal tragedy, rags to riches, barely restrained fury.
I don’t think that it’s really a question of who Cruz owes the most to, but I also don’t think that he owes Walker all that much more. Fiorina endorsed Cruz after Super Tuesday and helped him with his best Saturday of the race so far. She’s marched up and down the country for him. That’s important for a couple of reasons; firstly, Cruz owes her some shoe leather. Secondly, it means that she’s worked alongside Cruz delegates up and down the country. If you wanted to steal Cruz’s delegates, there’s no better way forward than being his primary surrogate, and she was almost alone for a while (Perry put a lot less effort in).
In favor of this, he did co-author the pro-TPP article with Cruz before Cruz abandoned that position.
Particularly from the people who would be voting (well, not the RNC, but from the 93% of the delegates that get elected rather than being there ex officio).
Edit: Again, it’s not that I wouldn’t be super happy to see it happen. It wouldn’t be an easy position to win from, but Clinton would make it more attainable than most, and Mitt would be a fantastic President.
@Brent — maybe the difference between Perry and Walker as opposed to Kasich is just that Kasich wants to hold town halls more than Perry or Walker? If either of them were likewise delusional and/or willing to essentially aid Trump they could be still in this and getting votes too.
Why can’t we get Selleck to run for Senate in California first?
If Fiorina has to suffer, everyone has to suffer?
Some say Soros; some say only his associates.