Though John Kasich is in a distant third for the Republican presidential nomination and has no way of winning the number of delegates needed to win before the convention in July, the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial board is making the case for him to remain in the race.
Calling him “a winner,” the Journal said in an editorial Monday night that Kasich deserves the votes he’s getting, which are prohibiting either Ted Cruz or front-runner Donald Trump from locking up the nomination sooner.
“All of a sudden the two Republican presidential front-runners seem unnaturally preoccupied with the guy in third place, and they’re teaming up to demand that John Kasich drop out,” said the Journal. “Why not let the voters decide, as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz otherwise like to say?”
The paper acknowledged that Kasich cannot become the nominee before the convention, but suggested that he could succeed in the event of a brokered convention, in which case no candidate will have won the required delegates in time and will have to re-organize and persuade other delegates to pledge their votes to him.
“He has no hope of reaching 1,237 delegates before the convention, but what Messrs. Trump and Cruz really fear is that the convention might want to nominate a potential winner,” the editorial said.
Trump currently has 737 delegates with Cruz at 475. Kasich only has 143.
Both Trump and Cruz have predicted a GOP voter backlash if neither of them is the eventual nominee.
