What is a brokered convention?
A brokered convention happens when no candidate running for a party’s presidential nomination has the majority of delegates needed to secure the nomination.
In the case of the Republicans in 2016, the number of delegates needed to win the nomination is 1,237 of 2,472 delegates.
What happens at a brokered convention?
First, a vote is taken. After the vote — or first ballot as it is called — if no candidate has the number of delegates needed to win the party’s nomination, the convention is considered brokered. That means that all the delegates won by the candidates during the primaries and caucuses are now free to vote for whom they want, and are no longer “bound” to the candidate who won the popular vote in the state they represent.
Then what?
After the delegates are freed to vote for whom they want to, another ballot is taken. If no majority is arrived at on that ballot, then delegates continue to vote until someone gets the required number of delegates to win the nomination. In between those votes, delegates can be wooed by those supporting other candidates to vote for their man or woman.
Cox Media Group National Content Desk
The 2012 Republican nominee for president blasted Donald Trump in a blistering speech on Thursday and said Republicans should fight for a brokered convention rather than permit the billionaire to take his party’s nomination.
In an extraordinary attack on the party’s current frontrunner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told an audience at the University of Utah that Florida voters should back home-state Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio voters should back Ohio Gov. John Kasich on March 15 in order to blunt Trump’s momentum.
The two winner-take-all states hold 165 GOP delegates — enough to put a roadblock in front of Trump’s need to collect the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination prior to the party’s convention in Cleveland.
Trump currently has about 319 delegates, according to a tally by the Associated Press.
In the bluntest language possible, Romney unloaded on Trump, calling him a “con man” and a “phony” whose ascent to the nation’s highest office would be calamitous for the country.
Romney assured the crowd that he was not running for any elected office, nor would he endorse any of the other three remaining Republicans in the race. But he all but suggested that the only path forward for Republicans is a brokered convention in Cleveland this summer.
Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report called the strategy a “long shot,” but said many think it’s a strategy worth employing. The last time there was a floor fight at a GOP convention was in 1976, when eventual nominee Gerald Ford did not initially have enough votes to take his nomination.
Nathan Gonzales of the nonpartisan Rothenberg and Gonzales Political Report said Republicans are increasingly embracing this strategy as it gets later in the process.
“For the last nine months, the idea of a single alternative to Trump was a good one,” he said. “But I think it’s too late in the calendar and the process to assume that two candidates are going to drop out and all of those voters are going to go for someone who is not Donald Trump.
“I think what Romney was describing is the most logical path.”
Romney’s comments represent the latest front in what has become an all-out attack on Trump since his sweeping Super Tuesday wins. Separately, establishment Republicans have set up a super PAC aimed at launching a blizzard of negative ads against the reality TV star and real estate mogul.
Trump supporters, meanwhile, were appalled at Romney’s speech.
“It was a call to arms to establish that we need to do everything we can to subvert the will of the voters and steal the nomination at the convention, plain and simple,” said Barry Bennett, a Trump advisor who has served as chief of staff to two Ohio lawmakers and worked for Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. Bennett was speaking on CNN.
Even hours before Romney took the stage, Trump was responding via Twitter.
“Looks like two-time failed candidate Mitt Romney is going to be telling Republicans how to get elected. Not a good messenger!” he tweeted.
In his speech, Romney lambasted Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs on other nations, saying it would instigate a trade war, spur rising prices for consumers, kill export jobs and lead businesses to “flee America.” He said Trump’s tax proposal, in combination with his refusal to reform entitlements, would cause the deficit and debt to balloon.
And he listed off failed Trump business enterprises — Trump Airlines, Trump University, Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka — as evidence that Trump is a failure as a businessman..
“Isn’t he a huge business success that knows what he’s talking about?” Romney asked. “No he isn’t, and no he doesn’t.”
He also was critical of Trump’s foreign policy proposals, saying his insults of Muslims would keep Muslims from supporting Americans in the fight against ISIS.
And he expressed alarm at Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. allow ISIS to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, calling it “recklessness in the extreme.”
“Donald Trump tells us he is very, very smart,” he said. “I’m afraid when it comes to foreign policy, he is very, very not smart.”
Rubio, Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are providing the only “serious policy proposals” that deal with a broad range of national challenges, Romney said, adding, “One of these men should be our nominee.”
“Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” Romney said. “His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.”
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