{"id":29672,"date":"2015-12-12T17:06:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-12T22:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=29672"},"modified":"2015-12-13T17:56:27","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T22:56:27","slug":"a-brokered-convention-and-the-gops-unforced-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=29672","title":{"rendered":"A Brokered Convention and the GOP&#8217;s Unforced Error"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s more insane &#8212; that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/12\/12\/the_gops_chaotic_last_resort_inside_the_calls_for_a_brokered_convention_and_why_it_will_never_ever_happen\/\">the GOP establishment is contemplating schemes to deny Donald Trump the GOP presidential nomination<\/a> or that they&#8217;re talking openly about those schemes eight months before the convention (and before any states have selected delegates to said convention).<\/p>\n<p>If this were coming from the media, I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised.  The news media talks about brokered conventions and floor fights every presidential cycle.  They want drama, and the party conventions are wholly lacking in drama these days.<\/p>\n<p>But this scheme for a brokered convention and floor fights <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/12\/12\/the_gops_chaotic_last_resort_inside_the_calls_for_a_brokered_convention_and_why_it_will_never_ever_happen\/\">is coming from highly placed GOP sources<\/a>.  People like Reince Priebus and Mitch McConnell seem to think that inciting anarchy on live television is preferable to nominating Donald Trump &#8212; and they&#8217;re not afraid to say so (or, at the very least, leak it to trusted Washington reporters).<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s especially baffling about this is the timing.  We&#8217;re a month from the Iowa caucuses.  The Republican convention isn&#8217;t until August.  No one has voted.  We have no real idea what the delegate scenario will look like a month from now, let alone August.<\/p>\n<p>All the GOP establishment has done is to give Donald Trump a talking point. The argument he and Tea Party firebrands like Ted Cruz have made is that the political class isn&#8217;t listening to the people &#8212; and here we have the GOP establishment, the literal definition of the political class, publicly saying that they&#8217;re looking for a way to not listen to the people, in this case, the GOP base.<\/p>\n<p>This is just bonkers.  This is the political equivalent of an unforced error, an own goal.<\/p>\n<p>This may end up being the most fascinating presidential election of my lifetime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s more insane &#8212; that the GOP establishment is contemplating schemes to deny Donald Trump the GOP presidential nomination or that they&#8217;re talking openly about those schemes eight months before the convention (and before any states have selected delegates to said convention). If this were coming from the media, I wouldn&#8217;t be<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=29672\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;A Brokered Convention and the GOP&#8217;s Unforced Error&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[3915,4258,4259,4015,120],"class_list":["post-29672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-2016-election","tag-donald-trump","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-reince-priebus","tag-republican-party","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}