It’s getting ugly out there.
In his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is stepping up his campaign in Utah in an apparent effort to deny Sen. Ted Cruz the 50 percent vote he needs to win Utah’s 40 delegates.
If true, there’s only one major problem with this strategy — even if he wins every single remaining primary and caucus delegate, he cannot win the nomination without taking the fight on to a contested convention.
This was first disclosed by Associated Press western political reporter Nick Ricardi, who tweeted:
John Kasich announces a Utah swing, well timed to deny Cruz the 50% threshold to get all the state’s delegates.
— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) March 17, 2016
To secure the nomination, a candidate needs to be holding 1,237 delegates in his pocket. There are 1,059 up for grabs and Kasich’s current total is 143. Accordingly, were he to pick up every single one of those remaining 1,059 delegates, he’d still be 235 short.
This fact was observed by one:
This makes no sense https://t.co/zRRbLsZYse unless your goal is to get Trump elected on ballot number 1.
— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) March 17, 2016
But the Kasich camp replied that that wasn’t what they were doing at all — they simply wanted to deny Trump a partial Utah win. They tweeted:
@ForecasterEnten @NickRiccardi Wrong. We can win delegates and keep Trump under the 15 percent threshold for getting any delegates.
— Team Kasich (@TeamJohnKasich) March 17, 2016
Bearing Arms editor Bob Owens called hogwash on Team Kasich — he knows dirty politics when he sees it — and he called them out on it.
.@TeamJohnKasich You’re running as a spoiler against Cruz, to be Trump’s VP.
Dare you deny it?
— Bob Owens (@bob_owens) March 18, 2016
And others agreed, beginning with Allah Pundit.
Last shred of doubt is gone. Kasich is in the tank for Trump. https://t.co/fevPZbVGD0
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) March 18, 2016
If Kasich is willing to do this, he’s willing to make a deal with Trump for VP. Which means the race is over. https://t.co/fevPZbVGD0
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) March 18, 2016
@NickRiccardi @TCuccio
Kasich’s staying in 4 his participation ? is going to destroy the Republican Party. The USA NEEDS him to exit race.— Judy Shwabe (@judy_shwabe) March 18, 2016
Finally, syndicated columnist Phil Kerpen observed that Kasich’s stated strategy wouldn’t necessarily work by noting a huge legal monkey wrench.
Bad news; that’s not how Utah works. @TeamJohnKasichhttps://t.co/SOOyFGU9cj @ForecasterEnten @NickRiccardi pic.twitter.com/SMBZAcngo1
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) March 17, 2016
In an email sent to his supporters Friday, Kasich admitted he was looking forward to a contested convention.
“Following our big Ohio win, we’re now focused on collecting delegates in Utah (will caucus on Tuesday) and the other major upcoming states like Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania and many others,” the email said.
And what’s their strategy from there? To “go into the convention with more momentum than any other candidate.”
Short of taking his own state, no one has yet seen this “momentum” he’s talking about.
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