We are now hearing news of the Empire Striking Back. We are hearing about a brokered convention.Republican officials and leading figures in the party's establishment are preparing for the possibility of a brokered convention as businessman Donald Trump continues to sit atop the polls in the GOP presidential race.This is not about Trump. This is about stopping conservatives from getting the nomination. Trump is just a convenient “boogie man” to scare Republicans into taking the power out of the hands of convention delegates. They will use the same “boogie man” scare tactics that they sold to delegates when they warned people about Ron Paul back in 2012.
More than 20 of them convened Monday near the Capitol for a dinner held by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, and the prospect of Trump nearing next year's nominating convention in Cleveland with a significant number of delegates dominated the discussion, according to five people familiar with the meeting.
Weighing in on that scenario as Priebus and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) listened, several longtime Republican power brokers argued that if the controversial billionaire storms through the primaries, the party's establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight in which the GOP's mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative, the people said.
The dirty little secret is, If you take a close look at the actual rules for a convention (which are written by the party), you will find out that if the ‘leaders’ of the party decide on a brokered convention, the delegate count doesn’t actually matter. ALL of the delegates could be pledged to ONE candidate, and the ‘leaders’ could at least try to bully them into nominating someone else. The ONLY votes that actually count of those cast by the delegates at the convention, not the votes that choose the delegates.Ted Cruz and his campaign realized they would be facing this from the Establishment. He did not underestimate them; they have underestimated Ted Cruz’s strength. Here’s what Ted Cruz did to make himself bulletproof from the Establishment’s plan of having a brokered convention.
Ted Cruz started his campaign early and he started with the Evangelical base.
Ted Cruz was the first one to announce his presidency and caught all the other candidates flat footed. Here was Steve Deace’s analysis of Cruz’s launch of his campaign.
For a campaign that wants to make the case it can be the one to build the necessary bridge between disparate factions of the conservative movement, announcing at a school with "liberty" as it namesake, also is a bastion of Christian conservative thought and activism, and is in perhaps the most crucial presidential election swing state - this was messaging jackpot.
The speech itself went over well, but for those that have heard Cruz speak previously it was sort of a compilation of his greatest hits on the stump. It was also a compilation of pretty much everything the average conservative activist thinks and believes to one degree or another. Which shouldn't be a surprise, because unlike other candidates trying to appeal to the conservative base the Cruz phenomenon itself is the conservative base.
When competing in a crowded field of talented alpha-males, it is best to either go right away and make a big first impression, or wait to build anticipation for the last at-bat. There is no doubt other campaigns will be re-assessing their announcement plans after what transpired at Liberty University today. Your standard speech at your local state capitol surrounded by loyalists won't cut it after these theatrics. Team Cruz made themselves "topic A" during a busy Monday news cycle, and instantly showed they're in it to go big or go home.
However, not only are expectations now raised for the candidates that come after Cruz, but for Cruz himself.
Cruz realized that he had to coalesce the fractured evangelical base that was ignored by Mitt Romney in 2012. This was the one group he needed to work on the most and now with the early endorsement of Bob Vanderplatts of The Family Leader, we are finally starting to see the fruits of all that hard work to get this group on board. Cruz has worked very hard on distinguishing himself from the field on issues of abortion and marriage. He has lead the fight on religious liberty. This group has been betrayed long enough. This evangelical army now has a voice. That evangelical voice is angry and is united behind Cruz and Cruz is helping them organize to defeat the Establishment.Ted Cruz is far ahead of the game in organizing in every state especially the South.
Ted Cruz is the only one organizing in the South like he is. He recognizes this as a huge momentum builder and, it’s going to break the damn and no attempts of a brokered convention are going to be able to stop it. I’m in Georgia and I’m one the 100 county chairs for Ted Cruz’s campaign. I get emails all the time on conference calls and the organization is absolutely breathtaking. It’s like this in every Southern State as well. We are ready for the fight. We are ready to reign down hellfire on the Establishment traitors.
Today, Presidential candidate Ted Cruz announced he now has 100 County Chairs in Georgia, growing his grassroots network all across the state. He has also expanded his Georgia State Leadership Team to include 12 new current and former legislators and four of Georgia's top grassroots leaders who join the campaign as co-chairs. This announcement comes as the Cruz Campaign continues to build a strong grassroots army across the southeast.Many top conservative Reaganite consultants still around to remember, are recognizing that Cruz’s campaign apparatus is stronger than Reagan’s ever was. The Establishment and their whores at the Wall Street Journal do not want conservatives to recognize this. They feel the disturbance in the force.
"I am encouraged to have the endorsement of so many conservative Georgia leaders," said Cruz. "We are continuing to build the strongest operation in Georgia to get out the message that is resonating with so many Americans. I'm confident that we're building the conservative coalition to compete and win Georgia on Super Tuesday."
"This is an incredibly powerful group of leaders from across Georgia," said State Chair Ralph Hudgens. "It shows that Ted Cruz is the candidate that best reflects our Georgia values in the presidential race and that Georgia is confident a President Cruz will stand up and fight for them."
The March 1 primary has been dubbed the "SEC Primary" after the South's college football conference, and includes Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Mr. Cruz's home state of Texas, along with Oklahoma and Virginia. Texas alone has 155 delegates and all told, 595 delegates will be at stake, the most of any day in the primary season. Most are in deep-red territory that the Cruz campaign sees as friendly terrain.Ted Cruz is not going after delegates in Guam and The Virgin Islands for his health, he’s preparing for an Establishment threat at the convention if it comes to it.
"It is a perfect map," said Jeff Roe, Mr. Cruz's national campaign manager. "If my daughter was coloring the map for Ted Cruz, she couldn't have done one better."
That worries some Republicans who had hoped the shorter, front-loaded primary calendar would allow Republicans to move quickly to anoint the party's most electable candidate. But now, some party leaders worry it could instead propel candidates who are conservative favorites but ill equipped to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election.
"If we nominate Ted Cruz, we might win just 10 states in a Clinton sweep," said former Rep. Zach Wamp, Tennessee state chairman for Sen. Marco Rubio. "He's one of the least electable of our final four, five candidates. It could be counterproductive."
Ted Cruz has long contended that the GOP nomination fight will be a grueling, drawn-out affair that could stretch all the way to the convention. And he’s taking out an insurance policy just in case.
Cruz is working the most distant corners of the political map, courting Republicans in the farthest-flung U.S. territories in an attempt to meet the requirements of Republican National Committee rule No. 40 (b), an obscure provision that currently stipulates that in order to receive the nomination, a candidate must win majorities of delegates in eight states or territories.
The rule - tweaked in 2012 to thwart potential mischief-making from Ron Paul forces -could be changed again. But for now, since the often overlooked territories count as states for nominating purposes, Cruz is attempting to pick them off to get him closer to the magic number.The Establishment might try they are not counting on Ted Cruz breaking down the door of the Cleveland Convention, raising the staff of Gandalf The White and Breaking Sarauman’s 30 year Spell that the Establishment has plagued the Republican Party since Reagan left the national stage!
“Whether you’re getting Texas, Michigan and Ohio, or the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and American Samoa, each has an equal voice when it comes to nominating candidates to put them on the ballot at the convention,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, who is advising the Cruz campaign on territory outreach and delegate counts, and helped orchestrate a recent trip to the Virgin Islands for Cruz’s father, Rafael.
For months, Cruz and his allies have been working the five U.S. territories — Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Virgin Islands — through surrogate visits, phone calls and other means. The Texas senator calledthe governor of Guam and dispatched a campaign emissary to American Samoa, located nearly 6,000 miles away from Cruz’s Houston headquarters. Dennis Lennox, a Michigan political operative, spent several weeks in the territories on behalf of the Cruz campaign, holding meet-and-greets, meeting with mayors and party and business leaders and sharing information about Cruz.
The territories offer “a lot of lower-hanging fruit,” explained a GOP strategist supporting Cruz, meaning winning a majority of delegates in those places is a more manageable endeavor than in the mainland states.
LOTR: The Two Towers - Gandalf breaks Saruman's spell over King Theoden (Video)
