You’re correct about that part. The candidates can endorse people, but they can’t reassign their delegates like that.
As others have indicated, it doesn’t work that way. The GOP also has Super Delegates who can vote for whomever they want. These are old school party bosses who will overwhelmingly go Romney for the good of the party. It’s very likely that Romney will have a majority by the time of the convention. It’s a simple matter of looking at the demographics of what is yet to come. Doing a mathematical analysis and calculating the odds as if each remaining contest is random is a waste of time.
There is a reasonable chance, I’d say less than 10%, that Romney won’t have quite enough to have an outright majority though. In that case, he will very easily have enough on the second vote to get over the top.
I hope you are right. As has been pointed out several times, if Romney loses it is likely the ultra-right wingers will say it’s because he wasn’t conservative enough. In fact, they hate Obama so much I imagine they will be in a complete frenzy by 2016 if he is reelected. Who is waiting in the wings for 2016 that will fill that bill as well as Santorum? His crazy talk certainly seems to have resonated with the social conservatives pretty well. I don’t see Christie, Daniels or Jeb Bush being likely to satisfy them nearly as well.
Well, Christie’s a bully and conservatives like bullies. He may have a shot if he can make it to 2016 without having a massive heart attack.
Sarah Palin, Bachmann, and Paul Ryan are the likeliest options. On the other hand, this sort of reactionary binge may peak in 2014 and with the Boomers steadily aging, it may be the last hurrah of reactionarism in the GOP. Then the Millennials decide to back someone realistic rather than “Paul for Pot and Peace”.
Palin and Bachmann are not serious choices. They may excel at serving up red meat for the base, but when forced to go off script and debate they just don’t measure up and even the whackiest whack job can see that. Paul Ryan lacks Mitt Romney’s raw charisma and connection to the voters. If Romney loses, the GOP base will go apoplectic and nominate a True Believer in 2016, someone exactly like Rick Santorum. Well, actually it will BE Santorum. He is the one who can adhere to Republican orthodoxy and it will be his turn.
Palin and Bachman are idiots. If they got the nomination the election would be a landslide of historic proportions for anyone who ended up with the Democratic nomination.
Paul Ryan comes across as mean and unfeeling therefore he probably would have a certain appeal to a part of the Republican base. The Dems would have an easy time defeating him too since he could be painted as wanting to take away Medicare and let Grandma and Granpa die out in the cold.
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