Allah:
The term “Trojan horse delegates” comes from former Trump advisor turned Trump advocateRoger Stone. I don’t know if he coined it or if he’s borrowing it but it’s a clever way to delegitimize a process that’s always been cronyistic and dominated by establishmentarians, not just in this, the Year of Trump. Normally it doesn’t matter who the individual delegates are: The eventual nominee clinches a majority during the primaries, they’re all bound to vote for him on the first ballot, so he wins the nomination on the floor of the convention during the initial vote and that’s that. What happens, though, when no one makes it to the convention with a majority? The first ballot comes and goes, no one wins, and suddenly hundreds upon hundreds of delegates are unbound, free to vote for whomever they wish. As soon as that happens, the results of the primaries become essentially meaningless. If, for example, South Carolina’s 50 delegates personally prefer Cruz to Trump, then South Carolina will “flip” to Cruz on the second ballot even though Cruz finished in third place there last month, more than 10 points behind Trump. That’s what Stone means by “Trojan horse delegates,” people who are bound to vote for one candidate on the first ballot but who are selected for the convention with the knowledge that they plan to vote for another candidate on the second ballot if no one gets a majority on the first. In that case, the identities of the individual delegates is of the utmost importance. And don’t think establishmentarians don’t know it.
Anti-Trumpers may be tempted to dismiss Stone’s piece as hype designed to rally Trump fans by warning them about a plot to deny Trump the nomination, but I don’t think it’s hype. Neither does radio host John Ziegler, who claims to have heard from multiple sources that plans to install as many anti-Trumpers as possible as delegates in various states are in the works. Various journalists have already written about it, in fact. Here’s Sasha Issenberg in a piece published last week titled, “How to Steal a Nomination From Donald Trump”:
“Forty-four states give the delegation-selection authority to a state convention or state executive committee, with no requirement that the candidate have a say in choosing delegates,” says Benjamin Ginsberg, a former general counsel for the Republican National Committee who managed Mitt Romney’s pre-convention delegate strategy. “Centralized power has dissipated in many states so that pockets of grassroots activists hold great sway.”…
At Cruz’s Houston headquarters, a six-person team overseen by political operatives, lawyers, and data analysts is effectively re-enacting the primary calendar, often with the aim of placing double agents in Trump slates.
Cruz’s great strength is organization, and organization is key in getting handpicked delegates elected at state-level conventions — not to mention identifying people who secretly support you but are willing to run as a delegate on another candidate’s behalf. But what about those states where it’s the local party bureaucracy, not grassroots activists, who hold the most sway over delegate selection? Without Trump in the race this year, that would have posed a problem for Cruz since many of those bureaucracies would have been working against him as the “insurgent” candidate. As it is, with people like Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham in his corner in an all-out “Stop Trump” effort, establishment muscle may end up being put to use on Cruz’s behalf in choosing delegates:
In those states with a Republican governor, the state party is typically a fiefdom of the executive controlled through a chosen chair. Although campaign-finance reforms have prompted “the weakening of state parties over the last decade,” as Ginsberg puts it, 31 states today have Republican executives, more than at nearly any point in modern history. Across most of the country, the de facto party boss can leverage the clout of state government—budgetary authority, regulatory power, public appointments—to enforce party discipline.
During the nominating season, this often means a governor can freely stack an at-large slate with cronies, expecting a rubber-stamp from a subservient party committee. In Iowa, where Governor Terry Branstad in 2014 helped to reclaim the state party after an unexpected takeover from supporters of Ron Paul, Republican officials actively discourage their rank-and-file from even understanding how the state’s 18 at-large delegates will be selected.
Cruz is further helped, notes Issenberg, by the fact that some states limit the pool from which delegates can be chosen in the first place. In South Carolina, you’re not eligible unless you were a delegate to the state convention in May 2015 — held a month before Trump declared his candidacy. Which way do you suppose delegates to that convention lean politically, Trumpist or conservative? Which way should those delegates lean if they’re looking to curry favor with local party bosses like Nikki Haley, who recently declared that she’s backing Cruz now that Rubio’s out?
Yes.
And I’ve been pointing this out for months!
Now the rules might change yet again.
Let’s play ball!
Oh, and in the 7th inning?
We just might change all the rules.