Minnesota standoff: the specter of a brokered convention haunts the Republican field.(2008 II)

IN The Guide for the Perplexed, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides asked his readers to imagine a boy whose mother had died in childbirth, and who was raised on an island inhabited only by men. Such a child, Maimonides said, could easily doubt the existence of such a thing as a "woman," simply because he had never seen one. This is, more or less, how pundits have contemplated the idea of a brokered Republican convention this fall: We've never seen it happen, and so it cannot happen.

It is time to reevaluate that belief.

After his win in New Hampshire, John McCain enjoyed a sudden surge in the national polls and in several key states--not just in Oklahoma, but also in Rudy Giuliani's home turf of New York and New Jersey. Even so, McCain is not anything like a prohibitive front-runner going into Florida. He still trails Mitt Romney in the delegate count.

As we go to press, Florida has not been decided. But there are two possible outcomes in the Sunshine State on January 29. Either John McCain wins and shortly becomes the nominee--giving the pundit class a few months' rest--or a long, bloody delegate hunt consumes the entire spring on the Republican side. The latter outcome would almost guarantee that no candidate secures the 1,191 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first round at the convention this fall. That would almost certainly result in an exciting "brokered" convention, in which no single candidate shows up in St. Paul this September with enough delegates to win the nomination on the first round of voting. The usual result of a brokered convention is a round of feverish insider bargaining, with everything from ambassadorships to Cabinet posts offered to the political players who can deliver the delegates necessary for a candidate to secure the nomination. Even the vice presidency could end up on the bargaining table.

No one can even be sure how this would play out, since the primary process has allowed Republicans to avoid such a spectacle for 60 years: The last brokered GOP convention resulted in the nomination of Dewey in 1948, though Ford narrowly avoided a convention battle when he edged out Reagan in 1976 despite failing to win a majority of the delegates in the primaries. Can the Republicans avoid a showdown in Minnesota? For the first time anyone can remember, it may actually be significant that Iowa's 40 delegates have not yet been allocated and will not be until the state GOP convention in June. Campaigns could even return to Iowa this spring to influence the state's county and district conventions. Suddenly, it matters much more than anyone had imagined that the five states being punished by the Republican National Committee for moving up their primaries--New Hampshire, Michigan, Florida, Wyoming, and South Carolina--lost half their delegates as a result.

According to national and state polls, McCain is best positioned to win Florida and run away with the nomination. But if he fails to do so, then Super Tuesday will almost certainly begin--and end--without a clear winner. Republican voters in each state will enter the booth without knowing the outcome in any of the other states, so even if they want to coalesce around a candidate, there may be no obvious frontrunner to back.

There will be 2,380 delegates at the convention, so the barest majority would equal half of that number plus one, or 1,191 delegates. Super Tuesday will allot 1,226 delegates in addition to those that will have already been awarded in the earlier primaries and caucuses. After Super Tuesday, 1,484 of the 2,380 total delegates will have been awarded, and any candidate with fewer than 300 delegates will be mathematically eliminated from winning a majority. But that fact won't stop any of the candidates from bringing his pledged delegates to the convention this fall to engage in a bit of horse-trading.