http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/gop-2016-paul-ryan-cleveland-213803 Can GOP Elites Really Turn Back the Clock in Cleveland?
Sure, they can pick Paul Ryan if they dare. But it isn't 1920; how are they going to convince voters to pull the lever for him?
By Jeff Greenfield
April 10, 2016
There was a telling exchange on CNBC’s Squawk Box last month that provided the single best bit of insight into the central conflict that will likely embroil the Republicans when they gather in Cleveland in July. Co-anchor Becky Quick suggested to Republican National Committeeman Curly Haugland that there would be deep anger if the leading vote-and-delegate winner—likely to be Donald Trump--were somehow denied the nomination after failing to get the necessary 1,237 delegates on the first ballot.
Haugland calmly responded: “The media has created the perception that the voters choose the nomination. That's the conflict here." But what about the democratic process? Quick asked. Replied Haugland: “Political parties choose their nominees, not the voters.”
True, it used to be that way. But the problem that the GOP establishment faces is that hasn’t been that way since four decades ago, when the modern era of primaries and caucuses really began and voters took the initiative away from the denizens of the smoke-filled room. And now Republican elders who are desperately trying to derail Trump are openly contemplating going back to the old ways, handing the nomination to someone who never spent a day on the campaign trail, never tried to persuade single voter, and was simply delivered the nomination by an arena full of anonymous delegates. Somehow, the establishment thinks, it can instruct all those millions of Republican voters who came out for Trump and Cruz and Kasich to fall in line behind, say, Speaker Paul Ryan.
This is the nostrum being proposed to save the Republican Party. The greater likelihood is that it will blow the party up, triggering everything from brawls over rules and credentials, to post-convention efforts to launch a third party or write in campaign, to guerrilla wars at the state and local level, with primaries and party purges threatening anyone who embraced the “party will decide!” philosophy.
Why the likelihood of such fury? Because the underlying question the Republicans will face in Cleveland is whether one can really turn back the clock. Now that ordinary Republican voters, like Democrats, have experienced decades of real democracy, what will their reaction be if it’s taken away from them? The polls tell us that Republican voters want no part of such a process. Even in Wisconsin, where GOP voters decisively rejected Trump, exit polls indicated that most Republicans want the nominee to be the one with the plurality of votes.
And that feeling is not confined to Wisconsin. A Bloomberg Politics poll in late March found that 63 percent of Republicans polled want the candidate with the most delegates by the time of the convention to win the nomination. Only 33 percent said the delegates should pick the nominee regardless of the count at convention time. And a pro-Trump PAC is running ads on FOX News urging viewers to register that sentiment with their phone calls.
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