The other threads about Palin are hijacked to hell and back so I thought I’d start a new one to ask a simple question: what’s the likelihood that Sarah Palin tries to get nominated from the floor of the Republican National Convention?
I’m not an American political expert - not even American. If you think there’s no chance at all, say so.
I’m not necessarily wondering if she will do it (she gets paid a lot more to sit in her Fox-built Alaskan studio for a lot less work), just if anyone think it’s something she or her team would consider if no one has taken a commanding lead. Romney seems ideal but has the Mormonism and Romneycare knocks against him, Bachmann appeals to a loony and fervent base but might not be able to maintain it with the majority of Republicans, one of the others who seem like non-starters may come out strong… it seems possible that the primaries won’t show a clear frontrunner. And it seems like something that would appeal to Palin - she can capitalize on the name recognition, it’s dramatic and will grab news cycles on the 24 hour networks, she would avoid the work (and vetting) of a full campaign.
Once upon a time, maybe that would have been possible, when the delegates were all political operatives. But today, a slate of delegates is chosen for it’s loyalty to a candidate, which is why you haven’t had a brokered convention since the 1970’s in either party.
The Democrats still have “superdelegates” of party elders who can swing a close race, but the Republicans don’t.
Usually, a nomination is sewn up long before the convention starts, and all they’ve really become are three day commercials for your candidate.
Unless the primary turns into a months-long slugout between three or more candidates that ends with nobody in a clear majority, it would be pretty much impossible. And that’s a fairly unlikely scenario - historically, all but two or three candidates drop out after New Hampshire, and by Super Tuesday the nomination is sown up.
Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever see a brokered convention or even a second ballot in our lifetimes. For what it’s worth (very little, actually) my fearless prediction is that after Iowa, all but Bachmann and Romney will drop out. Ron Paul will, of course, not officially drop out until much later but the difference between his full campaign and a suspended campaign is at best academic. If the anti-Romney vote coalesces around Bachmann, she has a legitimate shot at the nomination. Certainly before the first multi-state primary, we’ll know who the nominee is. Neither Palin nor anyone else could just show up and say “hey, I’ll take it” and then actually get it.
Didn’t they change those after last cycle so that the delegate slate in a lot more states could be split then in that past? I have a vague memory of that being the case.
(I don’t think it matters though, we won’t see a brokered nomination even with split delegations, unless Romney is revealed to have a couple extra wives at the last minute or something)
The last brokered convention were the Democrats in 1952, and I really don’t think it’s possible anymore, especially for the Republicans, who, as were mentioned earlier, have winner-take-all primaries and no “superdelegates” who can swing the nomination one way or the other.
The Republican primary/caucus schedule this year is kind of weird, I think. They’ve got the first four in February (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina), all the primaries that award delegates proportionally in March, and all the winner take all primaries and binding caucuses in April, so stuff’s going to both start later (last time, the first primaries were in January), and end earlier (last time, the last primaries were in June).
So that condensed schedule is both going to make things more expensive for the candidates (because they have to run active campaign offices in more states at once) and also means that an underdog candidate is less likely to be able to parlay an early primary victory into fundraising. I think that also lowers the chance for a brokered convention.
According to wikipedia, the RNC allowed states the agreed to proportion there delegates by vote share (so the opposite of “winner take all”) to move their primaries up in the calander. So there does appear to be an effort to give “under-dogs” a chance via that mechanism, though you might be right that moving things up will nullify that advantage.
I can actually see Palin having daydreams about getting nominated from the floor: it’s the folksy, dramatic, populist kind of thing that fits her narrative perfectly. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen–there’s no way in hell, for all the reasons described here–but I think someone could sell her the story.
I’ll give you dramatic, but getting nominated by a bunch of delegates in backroom deals over the person most GOP voters presumably voted for is populist?
I don’t know how much proportional delegation really helps underdogs, though. The way it looks to me, winner take all means that somebody can get the nomination early. With proportional delegation, there’s no fixed winner early, but once somebody’s behind in delegates it becomes very difficult to catch up, as the Clinton v Obama race in 2008 showed.
What would she get out of it? The way I see it, there are three things Palin might gain from running: The Presidency itself, money, and attention. For the first, she has to know that getting in via a brokered convention is much less likely than any other avenue. For the second, the longer her campaign is running, the more time there is for money to find its way in. And for the third, winning a brokered convention might get her a lot of attention, but trying for it and losing will get her almost none at all. No matter what her motives are, she’d be better off actually campaigning for the primaries and trying to get votes the old-fashioned way.
I think this is it exactly, except that I don’t think she has to be sold on the idea. I think she fantasizes about it already, and I even think her bus tour was supposed to generate evidence of the groundswell of “real” American who would raise their voices to demand her to run. I think she is like Gingrich in a way – someone who thinks of themselves as the savior of the party and at some point the party will call out to them to be saved.
I think she’ll be content to give a speech and get the crazies all fired up and chanting “$arah, $arah, $arah!”, and to make some folksy jokes at Obama’s expense, but she has no intention of running, nor will she be nominated from the floor.
If she ran, garnered a number of delegates directly while no one else won an actual majority, I can see her trying to broker a deal to get the nomination. I think it’s more likely, though, that she’d trade away her delegates for a promised post in the new administration (VP, maybe, or a cabinet post) because I truly don’t believe she wants to be President as much as she wants to affect the political process from outside; she’d rather be kingmaker than king.
If she did not run, and still tried to get the nomination in a brokered convention, I’d say it was one of the stupider things she’d ever done. Snatching the nomination from (let’s face it) Romney or Bachmann would alienate all the voters who actually prefer Romney or Bachmann, and screw any chance of actually winning the election. The GOP can’t afford to alienate its base; they’re not much (if any) larger than the Democratic base, and they must rely on high voter turnout to win elections. (Witness 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010-- the Republicans win only when they get high turnout from the base.)
Whatever happens, she will not actively run. She will be chauffeur -driven, maybe even hauled by a sledge or snowmobile. She may saunter, or sidle, or shimmy.
The most she will do is have the word passed around that she will accept a draft nomination from the floor.