Dick Morris takes a stab at trying to understand why the GOP race is in such chaos right now:
The Republican Party is simply not used to selecting a nominee without having it imposed from above. In near-monarchic fashion, the party has always had an anointed front-runner in every election since 1944 - Tom Dewey begat Ike who begat Dick Nixon who begat Gerald Ford; Ronald Reagan challenged Ford, and then it was his turn. He begat the first George Bush - who literally begat the current president.
The designated candidate won the nomination in each one of those years but 1964 - and that year, the party met disaster.
But President Bush has been unique in refusing to help his party choose a successor. The result is the fissure now is tearing the party apart.
The winnowing-down process that’s worked so well in the Democratic Party has failed totally in the GOP contest. With each candidate finding adequate momentum in the results so far, the party faces the prospect of a deadlock with each of the four main candidates (McCain, Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani) winning a share of the vote but nobody winning a majority on Super Tuesday.
Morris argues, and I agree, that the GOP’s only chance to stop a deadlock going into Super Tuesday is in Florida, where Rudy McRomneyBee are currently deadlocked in a four-way tie, with Fred Thompson close behind. If that doesn’t happen, and the deadlock continues past February 5th, then a brokered convention would seem to be a lot more likely.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
If Fred does pull off a miracle and wins (or places 2nd) in South Carolina, I can see the Florida winner just limping into Super Tuesday and Super Tuesday states being cut up among 5 candidates. Then we’ll have a brokered convention.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Dick doesn’t do history, it seems. The 1952 convention was deadlocked until Ike convinced the Earl Warren and Harold Stassen to agree to support him in a delegate dispute. That is what gave Ike the nomination over the party’s designated choice - Robert Taft.