Cruz Can Win the Nomination… If He Asks Supporters to Vote for Other Candidates

Having spent a year in “denial” and “anger,” I am now firmly in the “bargaining” stage of the five stages of Donald Trump-induced grief. After a Super Tuesday in which he won seven of the eleven states up for grab, Trump seems well-positioned to win the nomination outright so long as his opposition remains fractured. While I’m well on my way to “depression,” in the meantime I spent some time working out scenarios in which the remaining Republican candidates can block Trump.

Emerging as a new leader in the anti-Trump race is Ted Cruz, who managed to win three states and increase the delegate gulf between him and Marco Rubio. But can he maintain his current strategy and win it all? To put it bluntly, no. Super Tuesday was designed to play to Cruz’s strength among Southerners and evangelicals, but even then he won only three of eleven states.

The next major primary day is March 15, with the very important winner-take-all states of Florida, Illinois, and Ohio up for grabs. Of all the 234 delegates allotted by those three states, Cruz can expect to win exactly zero. Combined with the North Carolina primary (bordered by four states Trump won) and Missouri’s winner-take-all district system, polls could close on Super Tuesday II with Trump adding several hundreds of delegates to his lead over Cruz.

The good news for Cruz is that result would force Rubio and John Kasich out of the race. The bad news is it would make it virtually impossible for Cruz to deny him the 1,236 delegates he needs to win it all.

So is everything already over for Cruz, just as he’s getting started? Well, there is one path left to the nomination left, but it requires, paradoxically, asking his supporters to vote for other candidates.

The anti-Trump faction’s only remaining hope is for a brokered convention in August. If Trump fails to get a majority of the delegates during primary season, delegates are then allowed to vote however they want, allowing the delegates who support a candidate other than Trump to form a coalesced voting block. What will result is a bitter and dirty fight over who the nominee should be, but the important thing is it won‘t be Donald Trump.

Again, Cruz can’t win any of the March 15 winner-take-all primaries. But Kasich and Rubio could both conceivably win their home states of Florida and Ohio, and Rubio has a outside chance at Illinois. At this point in time, Cruz needs to be thinking strategically; instead of winning those states outright, he only has to make sure Trump doesn’t win those states.

My proposal is simple: Cruz instructs his supporters in Ohio and Florida to vote for Kasich and Rubio instead of him. He’ll make it clear at the same time that he still believes that he is the best man to defeat Donald Trump, and this is purely a strategic move for the good of the country, Jesus, and the Constitution. He may even throw in some flowery language about the need to make sacrifices in trying times, while slyly suggesting he expects similar overtures from Kasich and Rubio ahead of the winner-take-all Arizona primary.

As insane as this blatant vote-trading sounds, there’s precedent for it in this very race. Hillary Clinton gave her Iowa organizers an app so they could determine when to instruct supporters to caucus for Martin O’Malley in order to prevent dejected O’Malley supporters from backing Bernie Sanders. Likewise, in 2008 Bill Richardson agreed to tell his caucusgoers to support Barack Obama if it looked like he wouldn’t win in order to blunt Clinton’s momentum.

If Cruz supporters obey, Kasich comfortably wins in Ohio. In Florida, where Cruz is barely cracking double digits, the effect would be more muted, but could still mean the difference between a Rubio win and loss. Ultimately, that would depend on which Florida polls you believe– the poll showing Rubio trailing by seven, or the poll showing him trailing by sixteen– and where the 5% of Ben Carson supporters land.

This would actually have a secondary positive effect for Cruz, in that it would also delegitimaze his rivals’ victories. Rubio and Kasich’s entire candidacies both revolve around winning their home states. If, as many expect, Kasich and Rubio’s numbers go up following Thursday’s debate, Carson’s kind-of-departure, and anti-Trump ads flooding the airwaves, it’s possible that they could win their states outright, keeping their candidacies alive.

But if Cruz instructs his followers to vote for them, the undeniable impression would be that they are still in the race because Cruz allowed them to be in the race, regardless of whether that victory would’ve happened anyways. Paradoxically, Cruz would solidify his image as the anti-Trump frontrunner by keeping his challengers afloat. After all, are you really a contender when your opponent let you win your home state?

The downside of this strategy is obviously that it grants Kasich and Rubio a reprieve, splitting the opposition vote for the near future. But if Cruz shifts his strategy from winning outright to winning a brokered convention, that isn’t a problem: their delegates will (hopefully) end up with him in the end anyways. Indeed, he may want Rubio or Kasich to stick around for delegate-heavy winner-take-all caucuses like Pennsylvania and California where Cruz is likely to lose to Trump.

It should go without saying that all this is unnecessary if Cruz just quits the race and throws his support behind one of his rivals (and that the same can be said of Rubio and Kasich). But all indications are that no one is quitting this race before March 15. All indications are also that if the three candidates decide to wait until then to make this a one-on-one race, it will be too late.

It would certainly be a bold move by Cruz to try such a risky gambit, but he literally can’t win otherwise. And I have a feeling that, like me, he’s not quite at the “acceptance” stage.

[Image via screengrab]
——
>>Follow Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) on Twitter

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!