It’ll Be Cruz or Trump, Like It or Not

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on April 7, 2016 Whenev­er I hear Re­pub­lic­ans wax on about the pos­sib­il­ity of nom­in­at­ing someone oth­er than Don­ald Trump or Ted Cruz—talk­ing up John Kasich, Paul Ry­an, Scott Walk­er, Mitt Rom­ney, or some oth­er less po­lar­iz­ing fig­ure—it makes me won­der: Ex­actly how would that hap­pen? We all have mem­or­ized two num­bers. The first is 1,237, the num­ber of del­eg­ates needed to win a ma­jor­ity at the GOP con­ven­tion. The second is 40, as in Rule 40, re­quir­ing that a can­did­ate win primar­ies or caucuses in eight states to have his name placed in nom­in­a­tion. (It was ad­ded to the party rules in 2012, pushed by al­lies of Mitt Rom­ney to stifle Ron Paul.) Yes, the con­ven­tion rules com­mit­tee could the­or­et­ic­ally amend Rule 40, but then the change would have to be ap­proved by a ma­jor­ity vote of the del­eg­ates. Ask your­self, ex­actly which del­eg­ates would vote to res­cind the rule? Trump and Cruz are likely to have more than 80 per­cent of the del­eg­ates locked up, so which one will en­cour­age his