Looks like Donald Trump is going to face a revolt at the Republican National Convention after all
It hasn’t gotten much media attention, but Donald Trump’s 2024 Republican primary voting totals have been jarringly bad for him. Back when a couple other Republicans were still in the race, Trump couldn’t get more than about 50-60% of the vote, even though the other candidates weren’t popular. Even now Republican primary voters are still giving about 20% of the vote to people who dropped out months ago. Trump is running unopposed at this point and he’s still underperforming.
Given how weak Trump’s support is with Republican voters, I’ve long predicted that he was going to have trouble at the Republican National Convention. It always seemed probable that a large chunk of delegates would revolt and try to install someone else as their nominee. The odds of such a thing went up once Trump became a convicted felon.
Now, sure enough, that threat has turned out to be real. The Washington Post says that a delegate revolt is indeed underway, and that pro-Trump forces are now scrambling to prepare for such a revolt. Remarkably, this revolt is coming from far right lunatic fringe delegates who are looking to replace Trump with someone like Michael Flynn.
There’s no way that Flynn would get the support of enough delegates to end up with the nomination. But it is becoming clear that Trump is going to face delegate problems from both sides. There are going to be “establishment” delegates trying to replace Trump with someone like Nikki Haley, in addition to lunatic delegates trying to replace Trump with someone like Flynn. This will cost Trump delegates on both sides, and could – emphasis on could – cost him the nomination in a floor fight.
As I’ve said all along, if there ends up being a delegate floor fight, there’s no possible way to predict what will happen. It would be like trying to predict who’s going to win a bar brawl. But if there is a delegate fight at the convention, you can be sure that whoever comes out of it with the nomination – whether it’s Trump or someone else – that nominee will then be a lame duck. If there’s that much controversy about who the legitimate Republican nominee even is, it’ll only steer persuadable voters in the middle that much further away from the Republican Party. In other words, get your popcorn ready. The Republican National Convention is going to be fun – just not for the people participating in it.
