No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the Republican electorate.
Unless the delegates are more or less evenly divided, I see Gingrich going to Romney in return for power in a Romney White House. Lots of power
But using his delegates to get something … be it planks, or Rand, as suggested, named as VP candidate … that’s another thing.
Yes, the remote possibility of this getting to the floor undecided depends on there being at least three with big chunks of the delegates (along with one there just to make a point). Gingrich has to be able to take his home state, Georgia, on Super Tuesday with almost all of its delegates. (Awarded majority winner take all 3 in each of 14 house districts, and 2 out of three if the winner fails to have a majority.) With 76 delegates in play, Georgia is the biggest single prize until Texas … which he is also positioned well for. Ohio, the next biggest prize, is winner take all if one candidate wins a majority, or is the only one to get over 20%; if it goes as the polls now read - Santorum 33%, Romney 26%, Gingrich 20%, Paul 10% - then it gets divvied up proportionately. What with Palin endorsing him, Alaska may deliver a majority of its 26 to Gingrich. Gingrich staying viable enough is a very real possibility.
The Michigan vote is the big deal. Michigan’s delegates are not such a big deal. This year only 30 and awarded in a hybrid that is partly proportional … in terms of delegate count no one will walk out with much. But if Santorum blows Romney away there then the Tea Partiers in Georgia will probably move to him and abandon Gingrich … Gingrich is then out, end of that line of speculation. If it is a squeaker, either way, that keeps Santorum surging enough but not so much that Gingrich can’t get his too.
And then it’s what deal with what devil gets made by whom.
Secretary of Bling?
Ron Paul is not a libertarian. He’s a hard-right conservative who likes marijuana. And his son is the same, except without the pot.
Say Santorum wins Michigan. I can imagine Newt taking southern states such as Georgia. I think Romney could crush either Newt or Santorum on a 1:1 match. He could also win a plurality against both, but the latter would give us a brokered convention, albeit one which is probably decided ahead of time.
Predictions:
A brokered convention is unlikely: odds are currently well under 50%, but over 1%.
In the even of a brokered convention, Romney has an 80% chance of winning. In other words ruling out scenarios with intervening scandals and other unknowns, Romney gets the nomination.
How could I be wrong? It would be funny if Santorum and Gingrich had enough combined delegates to secure the nomination. I predict this scenario will not bear fruit.
In the event of a brokered convention neither Gingrich nor Ron Paul will be appointed VP. Might Rand get a cabinet position though? The party establishment will want to keep Gingrich out of trouble. Admittedly, a VP slot would be a plausible was of doing that, but also a grave mistake in my view.
Santorum will be most willing to cut a deal, and methinks he would settle for a cabinet position. Like Commerce.
Romney will offer something to every camp to make a play for party unity.
And Kucinich is not a socialist. But they represent those brands to the people, that’s just how it is.
I would expect the creation of a new Department of Abominable Cruelty.
Paul never really had a surge, he got third in Iowa and while he got second in New Hampshire, it wasn’t particularly close to Romney.
I’m not sure if Santorum will win in the South. Gingrich still has a comfortable lead in his home state of Georgia, and he’s won South Carolina. It seems to me that while Gingrich and Santorum are highly similar in many ways, Santorum appeals more to the Midwest and its blue-collar Catholics while Gingrich appeals more to the Tea Party Southerners.
Is this the same fellow who said he would not have given the order to kill Bin Laden?
They need to go through The Fly telepods or something and get merged into a Gingtorum sort of thing.
Secretary of Wives. And who better than a Mormon to set up that new Cabinet post. 
ETA: I take that back. Ambassador to the Moon, of course.
If Santorum wins Michigan it will give him a pretty good boost in momentum. Santorum’s numbers are already getting better in Georgia. Winning Michigan would likely make that trend increase.
If that happens, he gets a week of free media talking about his upset. That could help him pull an upset in Georgia.
If that happens Gingrich will effectively be dead in the water. He is already seeing his financial support dry up while Santorum is seeing fundraising pick up.
This is still Romney’s to lose, but I suspect there are many more voters in the South, and to a lesser extent in the Midwest, with an anti-Mormon bias. I can see that working in Santorum’s favor.
The inevitable nomination of Mitt Romney may not be all that inevitable anymore. But I still don’t see anything at this point leading to a brokered convention.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Because very powerful Republicans are desperate for an alternative. They will lay the groundwork for such an occurrence if only to have it to reach for. Better to be buggered by a donkey than by Godzilla.
Why is that?! How many very powerful Republicans really believe anybody but Romney has a chance in November?!
Or, have the very powerful Republicans already written off this election, and decided they might as well use this cycle like 1964, to spread a message and sledgehammer at the right-hand frame of the Overton Window, and they want a not-Romney for that job?
The answer is likely to be “none”. If there really was a group of “very powerful Republicans” wanting to ditch Romney they would have already made sure it happened.
It’s like the idea this same group of “very powerful Republicans” can make a brokered convention happen with a wave of their hand because they have lost faith in Romney.
There is nothing I’ve seen to indicate either of these things is likely.
Relevant Political story today:
Trajectory, extrapolation. They don’t necessarily plan on a brokered convention, they are planning on having the option. They don’t want to have to choose between losing and losing badly. And they need the Troglodyte Base, they need that lockstep enthusiasm, its why they are howling about religious persecution. They’ve got to give those people something, and they must, at the same time, not alienate the comparatively sane Republicans and independents.
If Romney does very, very well from here on out, they will quietly file the plan away, and pretend the thought never crossed their minds. Hell, he might, who knows?
Some thoughts on odds:
Let’s assume that for each party under the current primary system, a nomination contest that was still unresolved at the end of June would be a once-in-a-century event.
Since each party has 25 Presidential nominating contests per century, the chance of its happening for a particular party in a particular election cycle would be 4%.
Obviously some cycles would have greater or lesser likelihood than others. When an incumbent is running for re-election and is either unchallenged in the primaries (e.g. Obama 2012, Bush 2004, Clinton 1996, Reagan 1984), or challenged by fringe candidates with little chance of winning much of anything (Bush Sr. 1992, Nixon 1972), the chance of a brokered convention is zero. Those seem to happen about 1/4 of the time, so we’ve got to up the odds a bit for all the genuinely contested cycles by a multiple of about 4/3. So we’re talking slightly more than a 5% chance of a brokered convention in any cycle where the leading candidate sees nontrivial opposition.
And even among those, the presumption should be one of considerable variability in the chance of such an event. I’d say this contest is towards the high end. Let’s say 10% chance of a brokered convention.
The way I’d look at it is this: if, in every GOP primary season between now and midcentury, we had an equally unsettled contest this far in, then one of them would go to the convention, and the others wouldn’t. If that feels about right, then a 10% chance should make sense to you. If not, then it shouldn’t.
The obvious weakness of this approach is the starting point - that we should see a brokered convention about once a century in each party if they keep the current system. I can’t say that’s true or false, but it seemed like as good a starting point as any.
Normal people (ex: non SDMB posters) find persistence and standing up for your beliefs to be a positive.
I don’t think people would find his message appealing if he said, “Oh well, I can’t win it. I’m gonna throw my support behind Mitt Romney.” If he goes down with a fight, so be it. His supporters will decide what they should do in the event that he loses. That could be supporting Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Gary Johnson, etc. Paul isn’t going to make that choice for them and jump in with Romney. I could be wrong.
[QUOTE=Chronos]
Ron Paul is not a libertarian. He’s a hard-right conservative who likes marijuana. And his son is the same, except without the pot.
[/QUOTE]
Paul has done more for the libertarian message than any living person. Whether or not you think he is actually a libertarian is inconsequential.
True. But Paul has also done more damage to the libertarian message than any living person. Now people associate that brand with him, and not in a good way.