Wow, Curly Haugland looks like he could be the brother of Gideon Malik (Powers Boothe), the recently (three days ago) offed former head of Hydra from Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., doesn't he?
That is a most unfortunate resemblance, given what he seems to be trying to pull in advance of the Battle of Cleveland in just under twelve weeks:
Donald Trump may be the only Republican presidential candidate who can realistically hit the magic 1,237 number for the majority of delegates, but according to a senior Republican National Committee official that does not mean he will become the GOP presidential nominee.
Curly Haugland, a longstanding RNC official and an unbound delegate from North Dakota who will be on the convention rules committee in July, told CNBC that attaining 1,237 during the primaries does not secure the nomination.
“Even if Trump reaches the magic number of 1,237 the media and RNC are touting, that does not mean Trump is automatically the nominee,” Haugland said. “The votes earned during the primary process are only estimates and are not legal convention votes. The only official votes to nominate a candidate are those that are cast from the convention floor.”
That's just semantics. The votes earned during the primary process are more than just "estimates"; they're actual votes, however woefully miscast so many of them were. And per each State's respective party rules, the (mostly bound) delegates are allocated accordingly for the first convention ballot (a few State parties bind delegates for the second ballot as well). Yes, the delegates at the convention cast the votes that actually determine the nominee, but those delegates are obligated to vote according to the respective State party rules under which they were selected and, for the vast majority of them, bound. Is it going to mightily suck for a lot of Cruz-supporting delegates (such as from the "SEC Tuesday" southern States) whose Republican electorates hostaged them to Donald Trump to have to cast votes for the Democrat Trojan horse? You betcha. But that's what the rules require them to do, and for the entire process to be legitimate, those rules have to be established before the process starts and remain in place until the (in this case) bitter end. Period,
Curly, though, doesn't seem to care:
“Remember every State has a different delegate allocation process,” he said. “Delegates are picked up in State contests that can be winner-take-all, open primaries, and remember there are seven States that allow the candidates to pick their own delegates. Until those delegate challenges are settled, there is no 1,237.”
Haugland said he expects the delegates won in winner-take-all States to be most likely challenged.
"Challenged" how, exactly? On what grounds? The pro-Trump results? I can't think of any other criteria of which Curly could possibly be thinking. How would that possibly be justifiable? Hey, I bow to nobody in my #NeverTrump bona fides, but wouldn't this actually and needlessly lend credence to all of Trump's heretofore whiny BS about the system being "rigged" against him? Why in the world would we want to feed THAT Narrative? Nobody on the face of the planet deserves the "marytr" mantle less than Il Douche, but Curly's gambit would give it to him. Hell, it might split and splinter the #NeverTrump movement itself.
Not that I will ever be split away from the underlying principle. Donald Trump is everything that Jay Cost Tweet-stormed yesterday and worse, and I will never vote for him. He needs to be stopped at any cost....except that of becoming what has up to now been the slanderously false caricature he and his acolytes have vomited upon us and the party leadership for the past ten months. There comes a point where one has to come to grips with the reality that if a New York liberal conman could sashay and hoodwink and brawl his way into the Republican Party and take it over under its own rules....well, Pogo said it best:
It shouldn't have been as easy as it quite evidently was. There's no such thing as a "reset button," lovely as such a thing would be. And as I asked two weeks ago, why bother having State-by-State primaries and caucuses if you're just going to try to throw out the results when you don't like them? The party would have done less damage to its integrity by simply doing away with them at the start of this cycle, before Trumpmania ever existed, than it would be by attempting to nullify them now with some last-minute backroom stunt.
Trying to somehow challenge Trump's bound delegates at the convention, in other words, even if it succeeded, would be winning a small battle but getting routed in the war. And there could only be two winners who would emerge from it.
Let the nightmare play itself out, Curly, rather than stupidly contributing to it. Who knows, the situation may not be as bad as you think it is.
Otherwise, figuratively speaking, "preventative measures" might need to be taken....
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