http://www.weeklystandard.com/conventional-wisdom/article/2001980Is Cruz Stealing Delegates from Trump?By: Jay Cost
From Weekly Standard Magazine April 25, 2016
After Ted Cruz won every delegate up for grabs at the Colorado Republican convention, Donald Trump began complaining that the process at such conventions is unfair. His claim is that party insiders should not be making these choices, but rather that the power should be vested with the voters. As a consequence, Cruz is “stealing" delegates from Trump, and in so doing defying the will of the voters.
Trump's accusations are specious and disingenuous. The process that has been playing out is perfectly legitimate. Trump's real problem is that he is being outhustled by the Cruz campaign.
The Republican nomination process operates along two tracks. The first—which garners most of the attention—is the binding of convention delegates to a presidential candidate, through primaries and caucuses. When one sees news reports that Trump has 743 delegates, Cruz has 545 delegates, and Kasich has 143 delegates, these are the number of delegates obliged by the party rules to vote for that candidate on the presidential ballot in Cleveland.
But only a handful of the actual delegates have been selected so far. That is the second track, and it happens in three ways. Some delegates are directly chosen by the candidates, and others are directly voted upon by primary voters. But the overwhelming majority are selected by the party organizations in the states and territories, through a series of party conventions, usually held at the congressional district and state levels. In a few cases—Colorado, Wyoming, and some of the territories—these conventions are also tasked with binding the delegates. But most party conventions simply pick the people who will be delegates in Cleveland, leaving the task of binding to the voters in the primaries and caucuses.
Trump has been complaining that all of these conventions are unfair because his kneejerk reaction is to whine about anything that does not go his way. These conventions present two problems for him. In Colorado and Wyoming, Trump lost out on opportunities to win delegates pledged to him (i.e., the first track). But in other convention battles—for instance in Iowa, North Carolina, and Virginia—his problem has to do with the second track, in particular the growing number of Trojan horse delegates.
These Trojan horse delegates are obliged by party rules to vote for Trump on the presidential ballot, but they are otherwise loyal to Cruz. Just because they are required to vote for Trump for the presidential nomination does not mean they need to back him on other matters before the convention. Trojan horse delegates are free to vote with Cruz on disputes over rules or delegate credentials. They can also support Cruz on matters presented to the convention floor. All of that is important, as Cruz will undoubtedly try to tweak the convention rules to make it more difficult for anybody else to win the nomination. Crucially, the bulk of convention delegates are only bound to presidential candidates for a specified number of ballots. By a fourth or fifth ballot, almost all of them would be free to vote for whomever they prefer. Delegates loyal to Cruz but bound temporarily to Trump could ultimately deliver the nomination to the Texas senator.
Naturally, Trump thinks this is grossly unfair. This is nonsense. Nobody changed the party rules in the middle of this process, and nobody fed the Cruz campaign inside information that was not available to the Trump team. The rules have been a matter of public record all along. The Cruz campaign took the time to understand them and use them to its advantage.
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