Ted Cruz’s ground game trumps Donald Trump yet again

  In a previous post I mentioned how Donald Trump seems to have a win the state and move on strategy in this primary season while Ted Cruz has a post-election ground game which could trump Donald Trump at the convention in the event the convention is brokered.

  Donald Trump is winning most of the state contests and this will most likely give him the delegate lead heading into the convention, however his post-election strategy appears to be lacking when it comes to choosing who the delegates will be. While he is racking up the delegates he appears to lack the ground game necessary to ensure the delegates who are chosen in the individual states will remain loyal to him once the first ballot is decided, and this is where Ted Cruz’s ground game is superior.

  This will not be a problem if Donald Trump is able to win enough delegates prior to the convention to secure the Republican nomination, but that prospect is appearing less and less likely which means the question of who the delegates are that are chosen takes on added significance.

  This is where Ted Cruz has the edge because while his delegates are bound to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot they are free to change their votes on the subsequent ballots and because Ted Cruz’s ground game is superior he has been able to make sure the chosen delegates are sympathetic to his campaign–this of course make it highly likely they will abandon the billionaire businessman and jump to the Senator from Texas on subsequent ballots. 

  The latest example of this happened yesterday, suffice it to say he had a very bad day. Here is more:

It was another delegate bloodbath for Donald Trump.

In Georgia. In Wyoming. In South Carolina. In Kansas. In Florida. Ted Cruz put on a clinic, mobilizing his GOP activist base to capture at least 50 delegates on Saturday while Trump came away with about a dozen in another bruising defeat that undermines his chances to become the Republican presidential nominee.

If Trump fails to clinch the nomination by the end of primary season on June 7, the nomination will likely be decided at a contested convention in July. And Cruz, after picking up scores of loyal delegates who he expects stick with him if the convention takes multiple votes to resolve, is radiating confidence about his ability to prevail in that scenario.

Days like Saturday explain why.

Local and statewide Republican party organizations around the country held about about 20 conventions and caucuses to elect national delegates, with more than 90 slots up for grabs in a shadow primary process that Trump has blasted as “rigged” against him. The contests, open only to registered Republican voters — and in some cases, only to party insiders — identify individuals to fill delegate slots earned by candidates in state primaries and caucuses. Who these delegates are is crucial: Though party rules require them to vote according to the will of their states’ voters at first, most are able to vote freely if the convention deadlocks and it requires multiple rounds of balloting to pick a nominee.

So far, Cruz has dominated these delegate selection battles, even in states Trump won handily in the primary. Though Trump won all 50 delegates in South Carolina in a Feb. 20 primary, for example, many are poised to abandon him for Cruz on a second ballot. And now, in Georgia, where Trump crushed his rivals and earned 42 of 76 delegates on primary day, dozens are set to abandon him for Cruz as soon as they can.

  And there is more which can be read about Donald Trump’s post-election delegate woes in the article I linked to above but I will stop there, feel free to read more if you care to.

  While Donald Trump is whining about how the system is rigged against him–and I agree with him on this but would add it is rigged against every outsider and anti-establishment candidate seeking the nomination–at this point he should know how the system works and yet he is doing nothing with his post-election ground game to ensure the nomination is not stolen from him. Instead of whining, or in addition to whining, he should be better organizing his post-election ground game but it appears to me as if he is not.

  And that leads me to question whether or not Donald Trump really wants to become President, but of course I have been asking that question from the very beginning of his campaign because I believe he has an ulterior motive…

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium