John Kasich: What’s the Case for Staying in Republican Race?

Or, to put it differently, in a presidential race that many increasingly see as a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz—and in which many establishment Republicans see the Texas senator as the only viable choice to stop the Trump movement—why is Ohio Gov. John Kasich hanging around?

In fact, many Republicans are quietly hoping Kasich will drop out, fearing he will dilute the anti-Trump vote, starting Tuesday in Wisconsin, and enable the real-estate developer to win despite the kinds of difficulties he has encountered on questions such as abortion and nuclear arms.

Kasich and his supporters insist they see a path to the nomination. It’s circuitous and some would say implausible, but here it is in a nutshell:

It starts with an assumption that Trump won’t win the 1,237 delegates needed for a majority on the first ballot in Cleveland. That’s not implausible. He needs to win roughly two-thirds of the delegates bound to a specific candidate who remain to be chosen to get to that total, and that will be tougher if he loses in Wisconsin, where he trails Cruz in polls.

That would produce a convention that’s thrown wide open after the first ballot, because most delegates would be free to move to a candidate of their choosing. Some Trump delegates would move to Cruz, because they come from states where the party is choosing delegates that are, in fact, Cruz supporters, but not enough to give him the hundreds of additional delegates he would need. Dyed-in-the-wool Trump delegates who have bought into their candidate’s disdain of Cruz wouldn’t move into the Cruz camp. Cruz delegates angry at Trump for mocking and belittling their candidate and his wife wouldn’t move into the Trump camp. (Read more from “John Kasich: What’s the Case for Staying in Republican Race?” HERE)

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