Whoops. Turns out that running a campaign based on personality and free media, without much actual campaign organization, can turn around and bite you, something Donald Trump is starting to find out. Trump is winning primaries, but that’s not the whole ballgame. In many states, convention delegates are chosen after the primaries … and Ted Cruz’s campaign is swooping in and organizing, working to pick up every possible delegate while Trump’s campaign has been sitting back and assuming the delegates were in the bag. The big question is what happens if Trump doesn’t get to 1,237 delegates and the nomination goes to a second vote at the Republican National Convention:
“I've been telling the Trump campaign for eight months now that they're making a mistake by not reaching out to RNC members to establish relationships,” said one South Carolina Republican participating in the state’s delegate selection process. “He hasn't done any of that. ... That's usually the kind of thing that presidential candidates do.” [...]
In a contested convention, the South Carolina Republican added, “Every state delegation will turn to its state chairman and RNC members and say, ‘What should we do?’ There's no loyalty. It would be very easy for those state leaders to cut and run on Trump.”
And Cruz is working hard to ensure that they’ll cut and run toward him, while his own delegates will stand firm.
But that’s not the only lesson Trump is learning about the delegate race: After winning Louisiana, he may watch Cruz walk away from the state with as many as 10 more delegates, having picked up Marco Rubio’s delegates and the state’s unbound delegates. Trump is responding in typical fashion, tweeting “Lawsuit coming” and going on ABC’s This Week to complain that “What’s going on in the Republican Party is a disgrace.” No argument there, though it’s kind of rich that the party’s chief disgrace is whining about someone else’s competent campaigning being a disgrace.