Some dreams die hard. That is evidently the case with 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who took to the stage in Utah to rant in a fashion previously unseen by the former white glove presidential candidate against 2016 Republican front-runner Donald Trump. The passion and vitriol we had all hoped that Romney would have used to stop the most destructive president in American history was instead directed against a fellow Republican. But the question on everybody’s mind is, why?
The goal of Romney — and by extension, the GOP establishment — is to deny the billionaire businessman the necessary majority of delegates in order to win the Republican nomination for president.
Despite desperately seeking — and ultimately receiving — the endorsement of Trump for his 2012 presidential bid, the former governor of Massachusetts is now likely plotting to blow up the Republican National Convention by keeping Trump under the critical number of 1,237 delegates, preventing him from winning a majority and a first ballot nomination. Romney believes that when all is said and done, the party elites will turn to him to lead Republicans to victory in November 2016. Like he did in 2012….Oh, wait.
According to CNN:
Mitt Romney has instructed his closest advisers to explore the possibility of stopping Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention, a source close to Romney’s inner circle says.
The 2012 GOP nominee’s advisers are examining what a fight at the convention might look like and what rules might need revising.
“It sounds like the plan is to lock the convention,” said the source.
Romney is focused on suppressing Trump’s delegate count to prevent him from accumulating the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination.
But implicit in Romney’s request to his team to explore the possibility of a convention fight is his willingness to step in and carry the party’s banner into the fall general election as the Republican nominee. Another name these sources mentioned was House Speaker Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate in 2012.
You don’t have to read too far between the lines of the speech Romney gave Thursday at the University of Utah to see the imprint of this plan. He urged voters to support the candidate most likely to prevent Trump from racking up delegates in their states — saying he’d back Florida Sen. Marco Rubio if he were voting in the Sunshine State, Gov. John Kasich if he were voting in Ohio, or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the states where he polls as Trump’s strongest foe.
“If the other candidates can find common ground, I believe we can nominate a person who can win the general election and who will represent the values and policies of conservatism,” Romney said.
According to the source, Romney does not expect Rubio, Cruz or Kasich to emerge as the single candidate that can accumulate 1,237 delegates and outright defeat Trump before the convention. So the only way to rob Trump of a victory would be to keep him from reaching that magic 1,237 number.
Most Republican states allocate their delegates proportionally, or in a hybrid format that gives delegates both to the statewide winner and at the congressional district level. This means rather than winnowing the competition down to a single Trump alternative, it could make more sense for all of the current candidates to stay in the race for a stop Trump movement, according to one source.
The strategy is not without enormous risk, of which the GOP establishment is well aware. There has not been a winning presidential candidate who has emerged from a brokered convention since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A move by the Republican establishment to steal the nomination from the will of the electorate — who have voted overwhelmingly in favor of two anti-establishment candidates, Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — would risk a mutiny.
Ultimately, the winner of such a debacle would be the Democrats and Hillary Clinton. But that is the crux of the matter. If the GOP establishment is more willing to accept a progressive Democrat candidate under FBI investigation as president instead of representing the will of its own registered voters, then what, exactly, is the use of the Republican party?
h/t: PJ Media