The potential for a contested Republican convention with no candidate arriving with the requisite 50 percent plus one delegates is being widely presented as a doomsday scenario, blatantly violating democratic fairness and provoking chaos. We disagree. The GOP primary fight has left many conservatives disgusted, frustrated, and angry — although it has also created enthusiasm and engagement. The party split is real, as the result in Wisconsin further illustrates. The fate of the GOP as a coherent entity is genuinely in question.
The convention process is a reflection of our broader federal system, built upon the principles and institutions created by the founders. It’s pretty basic, but worth restating, that our nation is a representative republic, not a direct democracy. The electoral college is there for a reason, providing a counterweight among the more and less populous states.
It’s also worth restating that we are not a parliamentary system, the inherited British version of governance our founders rejected. Pluralities do not win or control the formation of our governments. Our mixed system was intentionally constructed to block the possibility of antidemocratic takeovers, however popular they may be. (Peter Wehner described this in his recent New York Times column “What the Founders Feared.”)
Allowing convention delegates to act freely as representatives of their states and parties is integral to our political system. In recent years the convention process has not been terribly significant, with most major party candidates determined in advance; there has almost always been a “presumptive nominee.” But the system remains, and it does not require digging into ancient history to see how conventions have not always been extended campaign commercials. (We can dig into ancient history, to see that Abraham Lincoln’s managers had to engineer multiple ballots in order to beat the presumptive nominee.)
In 1968 Ronald Reagan came very close to forcing a second ballot toppling Richard Nixon. A decade and a half before a delegate battle was fought between Sen. Robert Taft and Gen. Eisenhower; on the Democratic side in 1952, Adlai Stevenson beat the primary favorite Estes Kefauver. Never mind that Hubert Humphrey didn’t even run in any of the 1968 Democratic primaries and was the convention’s choice as nominee.
The close GOP conventions in 1968 and again in 1976, with Reagan the underdog in both, did not generate the kind of media scrutiny, and resulting allegations of anti-democratic procedure, we see today. Mostly this is due to the way social media has shaken up the news business; there are no more back rooms in the age of Twitter.
One possible outcome of a contested convention — the nomination of someone who had not participated in any of the primaries or who had dropped out — is a potential disaster. While we would regard such an outcome as procedurally legitimate, it would probably be too much for too many Republicans in an era when people are utterly unused to “undemocratic” convention results.
While social media promotes openness and transparency, it also leads to a dangerous myopia. In a very important civic sense, the delegates to the party’s convention represent their constituents in the same sense that any member of Congress represents their voters, of both parties. A senator may vote contrary to their constituents; they are not proxies.
Consequences can come in the next election. Convention delegates do not have this direct accountability as a recurring result, but the principle remains. Representation is a central principle of our institutions, from the houses of Congress to the convention hall.
Furthermore, a political party is an organization with its own interests, and not merely a tool for individual candidates and those who vote for them. It must be able to safeguard its interests in order to remain an effective representative, over time, for the diverse coalition of voters whose own interests and beliefs it advances or protects.
Since politics is a team sport, holding the team together as well as possible and ensuring a competent, loyal captain (the nominee) will, under certain conditions, be more important than satisfying even a large faction of unhappy members, in this case Trump backers. Delegates deserve more than a rubber-stamp status for two reasons: Plurality or even majority support for a candidate among primary voters may coexist, and this year does, with intense rejection of that candidate among a large swath of its voters. The delegates should consider that.
In addition, delegates may judge, and as people with a history of commitment to the GOP and of political involvement and knowledge have a right to judge, that a front-running candidate is simply an unsuitable nominee despite his popularity within the party.
If the results of the remaining primaries are less favorable to Trump than the previous ones, delegates will have an obligation to take that changed momentum into account. For one thing, a change in the primary trend may represent second thoughts among voters.
For another, it would certainly be an indicator of who does best among voters who backed a candidate who has withdrawn. Delegates should also consider how many voters have chosen candidates other than Trump, and how the extreme fragmentation of the non-Trump vote early in the primary season favored him somewhat artificially.
An additional point is how many of Trump’s votes or statewide delegate shares seem to have resulted from his high support among registered independents and Democrats, not Republicans. Why should these wins count equally in delegates’ minds with the results of “closed”, meaning genuinely Republican, primaries?
In keeping with federalist principles each state determines not just how its primaries function and how its delegates are apportioned but also how their delegations will approach a contested convention. Some may look at this scenario and see chaos; we see a process in direct keeping with our nation’s founding principles of representative democracy. It must be protected.
Which makes it ironic in the highest degree that a would-be Republican nominee has contravened these principles in bold font. Donald Trump’s direct assault on the framework of representative, party-based democracy must not stand. A plurality of delegates does not result in a nomination for president. It results in a second ballot.
If Trump ends the primary season in June with slightly less than the required 1,237, the more than 100 officially “unbound” delegates shouldn’t knuckle under to populist pressures to go with the largest vote-getter. Should Trump then fail to win 1,237 votes on the first ballot, many of “his” delegates would be free to support Ted Cruz or someone else on the second ballot. If there’s a third ballot, even more would have that option.
As scholars of conservatism, we are deeply disturbed by the attempted hostile takeover of the Republican Party by a man who has no apparent regard for the principles or values that date to our founding period; we are encouraged that the people of Wisconsin seemed to share this view a couple of days ago. A touchstone of conservative philosophy going back to our Anglo-American roots is that the rule of law is a protection against the rule of men. While less familiar to many Americans, the arcane rules of the convention process are in fact a reflection of the rule of law that protects our democracy.
This must not be superseded by the rule of one man, Donald Trump.
Jonathan Riehl is a former political speechwriter and is completing a history of the legal conservative movement. David B. Frisk is a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute and author of If Not Us, Who? William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement.Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
