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A Brokered GOP Convention: Yes But

[additional-authors]
December 11, 2015

The new scuttlebutt is that the GOP Establishment will coalesce to prevent a Trump nomination at next summer's GOP Convention.

Once upon a time, the Democrats required a two thirds convention vote to get nominated, which is why Woodrow in 1912 and FDR in 1932 required multiple ballots. An exhausted Democratic Party, divided over the KKK, required over 100 ballots before nominating a nonentity, John W. Davis, in 1924.

Technically, Eisenhower’s victory over Taft in 1952 and Gerald Ford’s over Reagan in 1976 were not determined until the GOP convention, though the outcome in each case was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps the closest thing to a real surprise was the GOP nomination of Democratic turned Republican businessman Wendell Willkie in 1940, who lost to FDR’s third term bid.

I have a gut suspicion that this year is going to produce a new variation.

Trump will see the near-impossibility of being nominated and elected. Instead, he will unite with his sometime buddy, Ted Cruz, before the convention, taking on the mantle of “kingmaker.” If Cruz wins, Trump will claim the credit. If Cruz loses to Hillary Clinton—more likely—Trump will escape the brunt of blame for the defeat. English history’s great “Kingmaker” was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who made and unmade kings during the fifteenth-century War of the Roses.

A bit like Donald Trump’s abortive political tour of Israel, he spent part of his career in France trying to drum up support for England’s “mad king” Henry VI. Eventually, Warwick lost his head on the battlefield to the (temporarily) victorious House of York which he once supported and then deserted.

Trump has no intention of following in Warwick’s headless footsteps. American politicians—not yet at least—are not willing to risk paying the ultimate price for power.

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