The Delegate Fight: 2012

[BigSkyBob]

Plus it's very likely that Florida will be made proportional, which means Romney loses another 25 delegates from the current estimates. (Possibly Arizona as well)

No, that will never happen, unless the non-Mittens get a majority without having done that, in which event it will be moot.

Are you sure?  What would it take for the Santorum people to mount a credentials challenge of Florida at the convention?

A majority, including one of the contested delegations.  If Santorum challenges FL, AZ gets to vote on it.  If Santorum challenges AZ, FL gets to vote on it. 

If Romney is short of 1144, it won't matter. After both challenges, he will be well short of 1144.

What you are describing is an act of a banana republic.

[BigSkyBob]

Plus it's very likely that Florida will be made proportional, which means Romney loses another 25 delegates from the current estimates. (Possibly Arizona as well)

No, that will never happen, unless the non-Mittens get a majority without having done that, in which event it will be moot.

Are you sure?  What would it take for the Santorum people to mount a credentials challenge of Florida at the convention?

A majority, including one of the contested delegations.  If Santorum challenges FL, AZ gets to vote on it.  If Santorum challenges AZ, FL gets to vote on it. 

If Romney is short of 1144, it won't matter. After both challenges, he will be well short of 1144.

What you are describing is an act of a banana republic.

What I am describing is found p. 616, ll. 20-30 of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (2011).  That is the rule.  He will need only to have a majority, minus the largest delegation.

For example, if there is a challenge to the FL delegation, Romney will only needs 1119 votes to have them seated.

BTW:  This is how Eisenhower got the nomination on the first ballot in 1952, IIRC.

Um, he will need 1169 since that counts the 50 delegates from Florida who won't be able to vote to seat themselves.

[BigSkyBob]

I think a lot of Torie's numbers are premature until we get more concrete information from the caucus state conventions. Romney is likely to lose a fair number of delegates from the current estimates.

Santorum is just as open to Ron Paul stealing his soft delegates. Missouri, Minnesota are two states that Santorum could lose as many if not more then Romney.

Does help Romney to 1144.

[BigSkyBob]

I thought this would be of interest:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2017792794_paul_supporters_sweep_two_seat.html

Paul's supporters may manage to take a huge bite out of Romney's projected delegate totals in Washington. The fact that they took all the delegates from two legislative district in King county is especially telling: he lost the county by over 20%.

Any ideas on how this will shake out at the state convention? (besides likely chaos as party operatives seek to avoid a Paul victory)

Paul may end up dominating a Seattle-area CD and pick up some delegates as a result.

Statewide---it makes the scenario I originally outlined (Romney camp dominating the State Convention and taking 34 out of 40 delegates) less likely, so the Santorum camp should be pleased at the news. 

It doesn't sound that Paul had the same sort of success everywhere, so I assume that the anti-Paul forces will still have a majority in most places at the State Convention.  I expect that resisting the Paulistas will prove more important that the Romney-Santorum fight, so an appropriately-divided Romney-Santorum slate is rather likely.  The 122 'superdelegates' at the State Convention would presumably also help out the anti-Paul forces as well.

If I can accumulate more solid data as to the results of the LD/County caucuses, I'll update my projection.  They run through to April 21, though, so don't hold your breath.

The State Convention ends June 2.

Since the number 1 priority of the candidates other than Romney is to assure Romney does reach 1144 [1169 before the challenges to Florida and Arizona] the rational act for all Santorum, Gingrich and Paul supporters is to apportion all caucus states delegates amongst themselves. If would suicidal for Santorum to throw in with Romney in Washington.

[BigSkyBob]

The Santorum campaign is trying to get Texas to change to WTA, but it's unlikely that the Texas GOP would agree to that, and less likely that the RC would grant Texas the necessary waiver to change their delegate allocation rules this late in the game:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/05/11041257-is-texas-looking-to-change-its-delegate-rules-to-help-santorum

The RNC waiver would be a formality at this point. Do you really think they would want to maintain the appearance of grossly favoring Romney yet one more time?

Texas has been WTA. The only reason it was not WTA this time is the fact that RNC rules disallowed a WTA primary in March. Since the Courts pushed the primary date past the date that WTA primaries could occur, the basic presumption would be that Texas would switch back.

[BigSkyBob]

A change in the delegate selection process this late in the game is very expressly against RNC rules.  While a vote at the convention itself (excluding Texas' delegates) could overturn that, there's no way that, if Texas were the deciding factor in stopping a Romney majority, that the vote would pass on the floor.

Unless, the party bosses decided stopping Romney was in their best interests.