Update June 21, 2016. The chance of a “Trump Dump” tripled in the last week, from 5% to 15%. Here’s how. Kendal Unruh, a Colorado Republican delegate on the Rules Committee, has a plan to turn all their delegates into Superdelegates. She agrees with Bernie Sanders: “the responsibility the superdelegates have is to decide what is best for this country and what is best for the Democratic [Republican] Party.” But she applies that to ALL delegates. So Unruh wants a new rule, the “conscience clause” that would allow all Republican delegates to act as supers and vote their conscience. Wow, 100% supers!
Here’s the trick, to busting open the convention. Over half of the delegates are bound to vote for Trump on the first vote. But none of the delegates are bound to vote for any particular rule. So they could first vote to unbind themselves and then not vote for Trump.
Ted Cruz arranged for many of the delegates selected as “bound for Trump” to actually favor Cruz. Add that to their fear of losing the Senate (now up to 65% likely), and “voting their conscience” on the first ballot, could provide just enough dynamite to Dump Trump. And remember, unlike Hillary, Trump did not win a majority of the popular vote in primaries, he just got a majority of the delegates because of winner-take-all rules. (Trump got only 44% of the popular vote and it would have been less, if others had stayed in.)
To Free the Delegates to vote their conscience, they need 57 out 112 votes on the Rules Committee, and just over half (1,237) of the convention delegates.
In the following history of “Free the Delegates,” (5%) means Trump had a 5% chance of being dumped according to the BetFair political betting market, currently the best predictor.
Tues, June 14, (5%) Bloomberg poll shows 28% of Republicans view their party unfavorably (4% for Dems).
Thu, June 16, (7%) Kendal Unruh holds first Conscience-Rule (now, Free-the-Delegates) phone call — a few dozen delegates.
Fri, June 17, (8%) Chief Republican strategist Spicer calls the effort: “Silly” and “nothing more than a media creation and a series of tweets.” Paul Ryan says, “The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that’s contrary to their conscience.”
Sat, June 18, (10%) Trump says: “By the way, Jeb is working on the movement, just so you understand.” Rence Priebus was polling the delegates about this non-existent “so-called movement.”
Sun, June 19, (12%) “Free the Delegates” (FTD) holds a conference call with 1000+ participants including at least 250 delegates.
Mon, June 20, (14%) Trump fires campaign manager Lewandowski. Caputo, Trump’s communications manager for his Cleveland team tweeted “Ding dong the witch is dead!,” and was fired. (Trump employees are legally forbidden to say anything negative after being fired.) FTD creates website. Chicago Tribune reports FTD has nearly 400 convention delegates backing it.
Tues, June 21, (15%) Trump’s campaign finance report shows he still has $45 million in personal loans to his campaign and has contributed only $0.4 million. And last month his campaign paid Trump businesses $1.1 million. In May, Clinton out-raised Trump by 9 to 1. There is now a petition you can sign.
Fri, June 24, (11%) Kendal Unruh sends her rule change to the Convention Rules Committee.
(I’ll let John Oliver explain the even more hilarious Dump Drumpf campaign.)
