When Will the GOP Rally Around Its Front-Runner?

W. James Antle III

Politics,

Trump is winning primaries, but his rivals are openly talking about a contested convention. 

Throughout the 2016 presidential race, Donald Trump has benefited from the traditional rules not applying to him. After Super Tuesday, he would benefit from some of those rules.

If Trump was Mitt Romney rather than someone Mitt Romney trolls on Twitter, Republicans would be starting to rally around him as the clear front-runner and likely nominee. This effect so far seems limited to Chris Christie, who is being crucified for it.

Yes, Ted Cruz had a good night, especially with his upset in Alaska. Yes, Marco Rubio is no longer winless. Yes, Trump had some close shaves in states like Virginia and Vermont.

Trump was still 7-4 on the day and is 10-5 overall. Even front-runners have big losses. Ronald Reagan lost Iowa in 1980. George H.W. Bush ran third there in 1988. Bob Dole lost New Hampshire in 1996. George W. Bush lost it by an even bigger margin in 2000.

At the beginning of the race, Cruz was supposed to sweep the South and win conservative caucus states. Now it is considered good news when he occasionally wins in these places. His biggest slice of delegates is in his home state of Texas and it’s not clear the map gets better for him hereafter.

Rubio has won exactly one relatively small caucus and John Kasich’s best showings have been distant second place finishes in New England states. Ben Carson is, well, Ben Carson.

The race for the Republican nomination is far from over. But if Trump was a traditional front-runner, under the old political conventions a lot of GOP bigshots would be declaring it over. Instead from Romney to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, they seem to be digging in against Trump.

One reason Trump would ordinarily be viewed as the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination is that primaries are usually driven more by momentum than the delegate math that technically determines the nominee. It’s usually the supporters of losing candidates who keep reminding everyone of how many delegates are still up for grabs after some other candidate has started piling up statewide victories.