By Brian McKay
One could go as far to call it a shit show, but isn’t that what was said last summer when there were 18 Republican candidates duking it out? Now it’s worse. Is it now called a super shit show?
Yesterday, Mitt Romney disavowed the Trump candidacy saying, “Let me put it plainly, if we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished,”. He then went on to rattle off a list of failed Trump companies stolen straight from John Oliver’s “Drumpf” drubbing on his HBO show (it is include it below if you haven’t seen it). Governor Romney stated, "His bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who worked for them. He inherited his business, he didn't create it. And what ever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there's Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks, and Trump Mortgage? A business genius he is not."
It gets better, with Mr. Romney using terms like “very not smart”, “liar” and the implying that Trump is evil.
Governor Romney called for tactics to ensure the vote is split among the three candidates, Trump, Cruz and Rubio, in order to prevent Donald Trump from reaching the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Such a statement might even give both Rubio and Cruz the reason needed to stay in it until the end and hope for a place on the ticket.
All of the talk of “little hands”, disavowals of Trump support and back and forth aside, this is now a certifiable super shit show. A strategic disaster of near epic proportions.
There are very few ways this goes from here and none of them look good for the Republican Party.
The first path has Trump securing the amount of delegates needed and then going to the Republican Convention. It would be one of the most contentious political conventions of all time, with other Republican candidates refusing to support Trump as the nominee in order to prevent soiling the chances of winning their own elections. An eventual match up with Hillary Clinton would very likely result in a loss for the Republicans.
If Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz stay in the race up to the convention, there is a chance that Donald Trump would not receive the 1,237 delegates he needs to win. This creates a brokered convention where the party has to decide on a nominee. Let’s just say that is a messy situation of horse trading. It’s a very good bet that the nominee would not be Donald Trump. Quite possibly the party could even move to nominate Romney in consideration of his place as the party’s current patriarch.
Rubio is currently shown beating Hillary Clinton by 7 points and Cruz is beating her by 3, in a hypothetical head to head match up. Who knows? A brokered convention might even put those two together. It’s all up in the air.
Regardless of who becomes the nominee from a brokered convention, Donald Trump will not go away. His ego won’t let him at this point. Thus the stage is set for Mr. Trump to run as a third party candidate. Such a run would take approximately a third of voters from the Republican nominee and place the Democrat’s nominee in the White House.
So, basically it’s a real mess. Interesting, but a mess. At this point it seems very likely that barring a massive recession or horrific terrorist attack, the Democrats will win the office of the Presidency should things continue to progress along down this road.
The real question will then be, what is the spillover to the other candidates running for Congressional offices? Does the Republican loss of control equate to a loss of confidence in them as well? Some spillover must be expected, but the extent of it is the question. If other Republican candidates move to support Trump’s third party, the mess grows even more and could cause the Republican’s to lose the House; something previously thought unlikely.
It gets really, really interesting at this point. It isn’t a common occurrence to see a true political super shit storm. Plan on it this time.
As promised, the John Oliver video is below and it is glorious.
Featured photo courtesy of Huffington Post
Brian McKay is a co-founder of zenruption and has his political science degree from Gonzaga University and his MBA from Boise State University. He geeks out on this stuff from a strategic standpoint. He also admits to extreme amounts of Schadenfruede while he watches it all unfold.
