Republican leaders are reportedly girding for the possibility of a brokered convention in Cleveland next year. Donald Trump’s reaction is the elephant in the room.
This scenario would occur if no candidate headed to the Republican National Convention with enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, making the quadrennial event’s role in the process less of a formality.
More than 20 leading Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discussed the possibility at a dinner organized by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Monday night, according to the Washington Post. The report said that GOP leaders close to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and 2016 candidates Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush were among those in attendance.
The news comes at a time when Trump has renewed threats to consider a third-party bid. Trump has said he would only bolt if he felt Republican leaders were treating him unfairly. The appearance of powerful GOP figures meeting about a convention that could theoretically choose someone other than the candidate with plurality support in the primaries would seem to lend itself to Trump’s argument that the party is trying to stack the deck against him.
Trump, who is currently second in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings, has said in the past that he would be at a disadavantage at a brokered convention because he won’t have the same relationships with Republican politicians and longtime party activists. Trump would have a plausible rationale for a third-party bid if he wins plurality support but someone who received fewer votes becomes the nominee.
There is also a risk that a candidate chosen at a brokered convention would have less legitimacy in today’s democratic political culture, especially if the nominee didn’t run in the primaries at all. There was backlash against George W. Bush winning the presidency while losing the popular vote in 2000. Some Hillary Clinton supporters even argued that she should have been the 2008 Democratic nominee because she won the popular vote if you counted Michigan, where Barack Obama wasn’t on the ballot.
The field finally appears to be winnowing, with only Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Rubio regularly polling in the double digits while Bush and Chris Christie remain a presence at the periphery. But talk of a contested convention could encourage some other candidates to stay in if they think they could amass enough delegates to make a deal in Cleveland even if they have no obvious path to the nomination themselves.
The biggest question, however, is what Trump will do.
