No, not because they were mean to Trump. Millions of people voted for Trump in the primaries. The GOP’s convention can’t ignore ignore these votes and disenfranchise the voters.
Trump is the clear front runner by a wide margin, by popular vote and certainly in delegates. I don’t this this is unusual. The front runner goes to the convention and is short a hundred or so delegates. He/she negotiates and agrees to support a few issues that concerns the other losing candidates. Their delegates support the front runner and you have a candidate and platform for the general election. That’s how people expect it too work.
They can’t ignore Trump’s 678 delegates and his millions of votes. To give the nomination to someone else would violate every principle our elections are supposed to stand for. Somehow Trump and the other candidates have to negotiate a unified party platform. Trump will have to support it if he wants to be the party’s candidate.
Trump has boosted he’s an expert negotiator. Let’s give him the chance at the convention. See if he can negotiate a unified party platform he’ll pledge to support.
It comes down to how badly does Trump want to be President? He has to make political concessions **and **listen to Cruz, Kasich, and the other party leaders. Agree to dial back the hostile and inflammatory speeches. Run as a more conventional candidate against HRC.
He can be civil if he wants the chance to be the party’s candidate. Its his choice to make.
HRC of course will rip him to shreds by reminding everybody of the nasty stuff he said in the primary. The campaign ads against him will be brutal. I doubt he can beat her.
He has a majority of those Wyoming delegates already chosen, but that is one of those with the multi-step process and nonbinding votes so most of them are still pending the state convention on April 16.
So he needs at least 4 other states/territories where he must either win big or meet a WTA threshold or seize a majority at the state convention, depending on each state’s standard. Problem is, if meanwhile The D is raking in delegates from medium and large states, there may be a committed majority in place by June making a Most-Hated-Senator’s challenge moot.
Otherwise, IIRC it’s first and then second ballot to give the frontrunner the chance, and only on the third you begin looking for alternates. The High Leaders such as remain would have to make it so*** nobody*** crosses over to the Normal-Fingered Vulgarian’s side for as long as it takes to come up with a viable alternative.
In the past, followers of a candidate that was obviously getting steamrolled would either just get out of their seats and walk out and the convention would proceed without them, or would see that they were going nowhere and begin to wheel and deal their votes with one or the other of the viable candidates. We’d have to see what the Trumpetistas would do, but that’s only if he does not have it all sewn up long before.
But in this case we know the GOP has changed the convention rules AFTER the primaries and not been sued. They did this to Ron Paul in 2012 if I understand things correctly. It has been mentioned several times in this thread.
I would imagine the D’s have done something similar in the past as well. I don’t know if it has ever been done to block a candidate at the convention when they have accumulated the most delegates though. But I’ve always thought both of them change the convention rules pretty regularly. Given that I doubt a Trump civil suit would get very far but then IANAL.