The Deadlock Scenario

[morningfog]

Thursday, Feb 9, 2012
The deadlock scenario
Mitt Romney’s week from hell has revived the most enduring fantasy of political junkies

By Steve Kornacki

Rick Santorum’s three-state sweep this week has revived speculation that the Republican primary season will end without a candidate securing the magic number of delegates needed for a first ballot nomination, resulting in a deadlocked convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer. (“Deadlocked,” and not “brokered,” is the proper description for this scenario, as Jonathan Bernstein recently explained.)

On CNN this morning, Sen. Jim DeMint said that the GOP race “could very well go to the convention,” while former RNC Chairman Michael Steele on MSNBC pegged the chances of a deadlock at “52-48.” Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics makes a solid case for why they could be right. The basic idea is that there seem to be clear geographic and cultural divisions in the results so far — with Mitt Romney doing well in the Northeast and West, Santorum cleaning up in the Midwest, and Newt Gingrich faring well in the Bible Belt. If those divisions persist and Ron Paul manages to gobble up a chunk of delegates, the primary season just might fail to produce a clear winner.

But as fun as the scenario is to imagine, there’s a good reason to be skeptical of the deadlocked convention talk: We’ve heard it many times before in the modern campaign era, without anything ever coming of it.

The last time there was true post-primary season suspense on the GOP side was in 1976, when Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan both emerged from the last wave of contests in early June short of the magic delegate number. But there were still a number of state conventions scheduled before the August national convention in Kansas City, and because it was a genuine two-man race, there was never any doubt that someone would win a first ballot nomination. Still, the drama in Kansas City was real, with Reagan trying to expand his support by anointing Pennsylvania moderate Richard Schweicker as his running mate — a move that unsettled conservatives and helped Ford secure a 1,187-1,070 victory on the first ballot.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/09/the_deadlock_scenario/

The internal link goes to a blog explaining why the best-case scenario (for Obama and the Democratic Party) is a deadlocked convention, not a brokered convention. It also goes on to explore why it is unlikely to get that far. It is still a very real possibility and I hope to see it come to fruition.

[Pab Sungenis]

1. It is a possibility, but

the conditions needed for that possibility to become a reality keep shifting.

Right now I think the best possibility is for Newt to stick it out until Super Tuesday, but get out right afterward. This will keep Frothy the Snowman or Rmoney from benefiting too much from the remaining proportional states, but keep Newt from being a spoiler against Frothy in the winner-take-alls.

A head to head between Romney and Santorum, for example, might cost Romney Texas and a couple of other Western states, which could prevent him from reaching 1,144. But if there are two conservatives on the Texas ballot, it's Romney's in a walk.

[davidpdx]

2. I'd never heard that about the 76' convention

I'll have to read more about it. It's funny to think Reagan came so close to getting the nomination then and to have Ford lose and then Reagan got the nomination in 80'