While wading through the mire over at Red State the other day, I noticed something interesting: Hunter, one of their regulars, thinks the GOP convention will end up selecting their candidate.
Jump over the fold with me. It's intriguing.
So you can read the whole thing yourself, I'm providing a
link.
To summarize, he starts with the assumption that Iowa and New Hampshire by themselves don't prove anything. (Duh!) Then he runs down the list of winner-take-all state primaries and assigns probable victors to each. Even Thompson gets something (TN). Then he calculates how much else each candidate needs to get the necessary delegates. It's not very promising for any of them. All of them have to get between 56 and 62 percent of all the rest of the delegates to get over the top.
Total Giuliani 1200 – 180 = 1020 or 56% of the Remaining
Total Romney 1200 - 153 = 1047 or 58% of the Remaining
Total Huckabee 1200 - 117 = 1083 or 60% of the Remaining
Total McCain 1200 - 76 = 1124 or 62% of the Remaining
Total Thompson 1200 – 73 = 1127 or 62% of the Remaining
The likely of any candidate getting the amount of the remaining delegates are likely to be slim and none.
Hunter's conclusion is intriguing, and he's not the first Republican to suggest that they might not pick their nominee until the convention. IIRC former Senator Rick Santorum said that recently too.
In theory, there isn't anything wrong with a convention-selected nominee. After all, that's what the conventions used to be for. In practice, however, it's not going to look good to a national that's accustomed to primary-selected nominees, with a convention to showcase the winner, nominate a Vice-Presidential candidate, and make two big televised speeches to the nation to kick off the fall campaign. The Republicans will come off looking fragmented and leaderless, and when they get a nominee, people may start wondering what sort of back-room deal decided this.