Brokered Political Conventions
The appearance of GOP Continual-Candidate Mike Huckabee on Saturday Night Live was very entertaining and showed Huckabee still has a good sense of humor, especially his remarks about relying on Super Delegates. His “I’m not a math man, I’m more of a miracle man” line has been quoted elsewhere, but he delivered it again with style.
What I found most interesting were the many comments by Huckabee supporters on YouTube.com suggesting that a “brokered convention” was going to make their man the nominee. Seems his followers, who are fervent, are not really good at math either.
Since a brokered convention is a possibility, at least for the Democrats, let’s briefly discuss.
Wickipedia says:
“A brokered convention refers to a situation in United States politics in which there are not enough delegates obtained during the presidential primary and caucus process for a single candidate to obtain a majority for the presidential nominating convention. Since no candidate will receive enough votes on the first ballot to win the nomination, the convention is brokered through political horse-trading and/or multiple ballots.”
This is sorta like a giant caucus. But now we have primaries, so brokered conventions usually don’t occur anymore. The last ones were “Adlai Stevenson in 1952 for the Democratic Party and Thomas Dewey in 1948 for the Republican Party“.
Please note that neither of those candidates went on to win the general election. It seems that a brokered convention really means that either party can’t or won’t get behind a single candidate in time for it to do much good.
Meanwhile, the nastiness is heating up on the Democratic side. Hillary Clinton is really angry about what she claims are misrepresentations by Barack Obama of her positions on health care, NAFTA, and other topics near and dear to the hearts of the Democrats. She is battling furiously for Ohio and Texas delegates on March 4th, in order to stay in the running for the nomination.
For the GOPs, John McCain had his own battle with the New York Times this week over their bombshell “infidelity with a LOBBYIST” allegations. So far, it’s McCain - 1, N.Y.Times - 0. The Times printed a ’semi-retraction’ after they were called the National Times Enquirer by several respected journalists.
It was kind of interesting to see all the liberal blogs on the internet hurriedly broadcasting the “shocking allegations” and “aha, the truth at last!” stories, until the Times back-peddled. So far, no retractions on that front - that I could find.
Tags: Barack Obama, brokered convention, caucus, delegates, Democratic National Convention, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, lobbyists, Mike Huckabee, New York Times, Ohio primary, Politics, Republicans, Texas primaryLeave a Reply
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