A Brokered Convention in 2012 Would Be Almost Impossible

As the Republican presidential nomination process rolls on after Super Tuesday, questions are starting to arise about the possibility of a single candidate not receiving a majority of the delegates.

Sean Trende outlines in an article in RealClearPolitics how Mitt Romney, the current leader in delegates, could stumble through the spring and wind up with fewer delegates needed for the nomination. While still calling a brokered convention "a long shot" at this point, Trende recognizes that it's a legitimate possibility too. And he's not the only one talking about it. Newt Gingrich broached the topic on Fox News Thursday.

But what exactly would a brokered convention entail and how realistic is the possibility? Here is a closer look at what a brokered convention would actually mean:

* There hasn't been a truly brokered convention since the Democrats did it in 1952.

* Since the development of the primary election system, most of a party's available delegates are allocated through primary and caucus voting in each state. The GOP in 2012 has a total of 2,286 delegates in play. This means that a candidate who wins a majority of those delegates -- 1,144 -- will win the nomination.

* If a candidate receives a majority of delegates then the vote at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., this August will, as it has been a most political conventions in recent generations, be a simple formality.

* If no candidate receives a majority, as Slate explains, the first thing that would likely happen, prior to the convention, is for Republican Party leaders to ask the superdelegates -- those at-large delegates who are typically not bound by their state to support any one candidate -- to throw their support behind the leading candidate giving that person a majority.

* If the superdelegates can't push any single candidate into the delegate majority with their support, or party leaders can't convince enough superdelegates to support the leading candidate, the "backroom" discussions on what to do will begin among party leaders. As Slate notes, most of the discussions would most likely revolve around reallocating delegates from any candidates who have dropped out of the race.

* In all likelihood a deal would be struck and a decision would be made long before the G.O.P convention kicked off. As Jeff Greenfield has noted, the pervasiveness of television has changed the complexion of the political convention from the dark, "smoke-filled room" to a much more sanitized vision of unity. With the ultimate goal of the Republican Party being to replace President Barack Obama in the White House, televised images of a party fighting over who its leader should be could do irreparable harm to their chances of achieving success in the general election.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/brokered-convention-2012-almost-impossible-021300757.html

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