Source: Time
Republican voters handed down a split decision Tuesday that suggests the race for the party’s nomination will go all the way to Cleveland, raising the prospect of a contested convention that could tear the GOP in two.
Donald Trump padded his delegate lead by grabbing the night’s biggest prize, a blowout victory in Florida that knocked Senator Marco Rubio out of the race. Trump also snagged victories in Illinois and North Carolina and appeared set to eke out a fourth win in Missouri as the final returns trickled in late Tuesday. But his failure to deliver a knockout blow in Ohio gives him an uphill fight to secure the 1,237 delegates required to win the GOP nomination outright.
Ohio Governor John Kasich’s victory in the Buckeye State and Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s string of second-place finishes all but guarantee that both will stay in the race for the foreseeable future, racking up delegates at Trump’s expense. “We are going to go all the way to Cleveland and secure the Republican nomination,” Kasich told his crowd as he logged his presidential campaign’s first statewide win.
The prospect of a contested floor fight in July would be remarkable in modern electoral history: not since 1952 has a party arrived at a nominating convention without a presumptive winner. Party insiders’ determination to stop Trump could spur them to wrest away the crown, and the spectacle would create chaos for the GOP. Any move to block Trump’s coronation would be met with open revolt by the candidate’s fervent supporters.
“There will be such fury. There will be riots in the streets. It will be like France in the 1700s,” said Lison Drummond, a 74-year-old retiree from Grosse Pointe, Mich. “There’s no way they can take it away from him. The people will not stand for it.” It’s a threat the party can’t take lightly given the pattern of violence emerging at Trump’s campaign events. Security is always tight at conventions. They might need it in Cleveland.
Still, if Trump fails to notch a majority of bound delegates, the swath of the party that seems desperate to stop him will have the power to do it — so long as they’re willing to risk the party rupturing in the process. And the math and the map now suggest that Trump’s foes may get that chance.
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