The U.K. sports betting site PaddyPower.com, has a politics section and a U.S. politics subsection. They're giving odds that Rubio edges out Herr Trumpf for the GOP nomination and they're giving odds that Hillary will be the next president. They give 200 to 1 odds on Santorum getting the nomination and 300 to 1 odds that Santorum wins the presidency. No where in their calculus though is the deadlocked, brokered convention and a Paul Ryan nomination.Apparently Rove takes up some space at the Wall Street Journal every year with a column-full of predictions. Poor man must be in a lot of pain; he foresees an awful lot of doom and gloom. He also predicts that "If the GOP contest narrows to two or three candidates by March 15, Mr. Trump will not be the party’s nominee." So... going back to my own predictions, we see Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Confederate SuperTuesday, as well as Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi have all happened. Huckabee, Santorum and Kasich are long gone by then, probably Fiorina is finished being humiliated already as well. With Dr. Ben... well, it's a matter if the money is still flowing in or not from the rubes. Rand Paul wants to win in Kentucky apparently before he drops out. Christie's probably given up and maybe Bush is hanging on by a thread, waiting to be killed off in his home state. If Rubio has lost everything already (including Nevada, where he used to live) he could be gone... unless Trumpf pulls out after he loses enough states and gets tired of hearing people yelling "loser" wherever he goes. If that happens, we'll see a two-man race between Cruz and Rubio. Obviously the biggest "if" is Herr. If he stays in, it's a brokered convention and the GOP establishment gets what they want: Ryan. Back to Rove:
If on the Ides of March someone wins both the winner-take-all statewide primaries in Florida and Ohio, that person will be the nominee.The GOP will hold its first multiballot convention since 1948. Delegates will be fractured-- with many legally bound, for at least one ballot, to support the winner of their state or district-- and at least two ballots will be required. But the candidate with the most delegates going in will win.If Mr. Trump is its standard-bearer, the GOP will lose the White House and the Senate, and its majority in the House will fall dramatically. If the nominee is Ted Cruz the situation is still dicey. Any of the other major candidates, if nominated, will best Mrs. Clinton in a close race and help the GOP narrowly keep the Senate.
I was sure I saw Trumpf tweeting a bunch of stuff out about how stoopid Rove is and how he he still thinks Romney won and how he wasted all his investor's money and so on, but either it was tweets or the tweets are deleted. Trumpf had forgotten about Rove by the time he got to his bund rally in Clear Lake, Iowa yesterday too try it undermine Ted Cruz's lead in the state. Earlier he had been tweeting about Lawrence Tribe's view that Cruz's eligibility must be decided by the courts and in Clear Lake he made the point that nominating Cruz would be risky, "It’s not a settled matter. He was born in Canada. And I say to Ted, and as a Republican I say it, because I think it’s very important, you gotta get it straightened out." He referred to Alan Grayson's warning to bring a law suit as soon as Cruz is nominated and then went off on another of his crazy incoherent rambles. "And, honestly, I don’t know, because some people say you have to be born on the land, OK? You have to be born on the land. That’s what I always thought before, you have to be born on the land. So he was born in Canada." He didn't start carrying on about his admiration for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and his methods of killing off his political rivals until he got to Ottumwa. Another Putin moment for the Iowans to think about.
