Actually things look pretty good lately, from the Republican Establishment point-of-view. With the results of the latest conventions playing out, they look to have a good shot of pulling this plan off, even if Trump rolls through big victories in the rest of the primary calendar.
They just need to stop him in a few key states. They have already taken a good chunk of Indiana's unpledged delegates off the table from him, before the state has even votes. Even if he won big there, he would not get 57 but a much smaller number.
Trump apparently is not only going to have to go for broke in New York and the Northeast primary, but absolutely win West Virginia, and score big in Oregon and Washington. He will need some help in New Mexico and maybe (gasp) Nebraska, which looks like a juicy state for Ted Cruz to sweep, given how things have been playing out.
Yet it is important to note, however, that the Republican Establishment, who is marshaling all its power this way to stop Trump, is not the same thing as the Establishment.
There is actually very little overlap. The Bush family, and a few other very close insiders, are pretty much every one in that fits that category at this point.
Everyone else in the Republican Establishment is actually an outsider. Even poor Mitt Romney is ultimately an outsider, partly because he is a Mormon, a uniquely American but misunderstood people who have tried to make their own version of the Establishment, and have therefore stayed willful outsiders to it, while they negotiate a way to become part of the larger whole. They are not truly trusted by the Establishment, yet many Mormons desire to serve the Establishment as loyal "near-insiders"
Had Romney become President, it would have been a watershed moment for the Mormon Church because the Establishment would have had to let him in as a "made man," so to speak. Otherwise the system would be broken, since the U.S. President must be an insider for it to work. Romney's accession to the Establishment would have been a Sally Field-type moment for him and his followers.
On the other hand, neither Trump nor Sanders apparently has any desire to be inside the Establishment as President. Both detest it for their own reasons. Neither belongs there. It be absurd to consider the possibility.
That's the problem the Establishment is facing right now. They can't let that situation arise, in which the U.S. President is an outsider to their system. The whole rationale would fall apart (and yet horribly enough the world might go on).
For the time being, the Republican Establishment serves the Establishment faithfully as a "Mini-Me" version of it, partly because mainline Republicans are good followers of the power-leaders in any hierarchical setting that feels corporate, which the Establishment certainly does.*
The top members of Republican Establishment, like the people high up in any such organization, have put in many years to get where they are. They have cushy positions in the Establishment-dominated world, and they would like to keep those positions. They enjoy having the continuing loyalty of the peons below them. They like seeing their name in all those signs in the suburbs, and all the love they receive in high school gymnasiums. This is human nature.
Moreover, many of them make lots of money off being good losers to the Democrats. They put up a fight against the creation of bureaucracies, then go on to make a fortune running the corporations and lobbying firms that are outsourced to do much of the government work for these programs. Many of them don't even care much if they win any given Presidential election. So long as the party hierarchy is not much disturbed overall, except by choice over time.
As I said, the position of the GOP Establishment Mini-Me looks good, in regards to the threat of Trump. They will stop him short, it seems. A good guess is that Trump could reach about 1190-1200 at the end of things---fifty or so delegates short of where he needs to be.
That would mean that his loss in Ohio to John Kasich on Mar. 15 will have truly been the deciding factor after all.
And the gall of Kasich afterwards, acting like some kind of winner!
Ohio is a very interesting state on the Republican calendar.
Compared to the Democrats, who make it hard to win huge blocs of delegates, the Republican Primary overall is skewed towards winner-take-all states in the later half. In part his makes it easy for the front-runner to pull away from the competition.
Not all states in the Republican calendar are winner-take-all, but it turns out most states that are said to be so (including Wisconsin, California and Florida) actually allocate part of the delegate slate by separate Congressional District, on a winner-take-all basis within each one, and with an overall statewide winner-take-all portion.
Ohio truly is winner-take-all. Quite rare, actually.
I haven't analyzed it completely, but my impression is that Ohio's solid block of sixty-six truly is actually one of the biggest solid slates available in the whole primary calendar, if not the biggest, next to California's statewide winner-take-all portion
In a way, Ohio's privilege of having this "solid 66" in the middle of the primary calendar reflects the deep importance of the state in the history of the Republican party on a Presidential level.
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| Brady-Handy photograph of James Garfield, taken between 1870 and 1880. "Garfield was raised in humble circumstances on an Ohio farm by his widowed mother. He worked at various jobs, including on a canal boat, in his youth. Beginning at age 17, he attended several Ohio schools, then studied at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1856." (wikipedia). |
Too bad Trump lost the state, especially to a guy who couldn't win a single other place on the map!
If only the Ohio delegation could be persuaded to vote for him on the first ballot...
Good elephants hold the tail of the one in front. At some point they may start holding a new tail.
*Democrats are equally good followers, it turns out, but in a different type of hierarchy.
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