Has Trump won another pyrrhic battle, only to ultimately lose the war?

By Rob Janicki

Donald Trump, by all accounts, has won the New York GOP primary.  Let's put that in perspective for a moment.  The problem is that Hillary and Bernie individually garnered more votes in the New York Democratic primary than did Donald Trump in the Republican primary.  In the general election New York is a given for the Democratic candidate.

The GOP presidential campaign reminds me of the Civil War where the CSA won more battles than did the Union, but, in the end, the CSA lost the war to a disparate Union that came together to defeat the CSA.

Donald Trump has tried to create a political party primary in his mind's eye, but that obviates reality.  Primaries aren't about direct elections of the people and they never were.  Political parties are private organizations that create their own operating rules.

Trump wants to pander to the populist idea that the primary process is an exercise in direct democracy.  That's not, nor has it ever been, the guiding principle upon which political party primaries are conducted.

The most important principle a party follows in a primary process, be it Republican or Democratic, is to win the most important election of all the elections and that's the presidential election.  The party is concerned with winning the presidential election and not particularly nominating the most popular candidate, who only has the support of a plurality of the voters in the primary process.  

The primary process is meant to be a shakeout of candidates to see who is the most electable in the general election and, as it stands today, Donald Trump is the least electable among Ted Cruz and even John Kasich.

Donald Trump, the political amateur, bangs the drum over "fairness" and "democracy" using all kinds of other nonsense, despite the GOP rules to the contrary, and wants and expects the GOP to come to heel to his demands that the candidate with a plurality of delegate votes in the convention, should win the nomination ipso facto because he says it's only "fair".

The GOP primary process, not that much different than the Democratic primary process, is a representative process to nominate the most electable candidate for the party in the general election. It's the party regulars in every state, county, congressional district and precinct who have the pulse of the party voters and believe they know who is the most electable candidate for the party to support.  Are these people always right?  Maybe not, but in the end it is the candidate chosen by the delegates who must win the general election by promoting a campaign superior to the opposing candidate.

So, where does all this leave the Republican Party and the voters?

It's still problematical whether Donald Trump will accumulate the necessary 1237 delegate votes prior to the GOP convention in July.  Should Trump fail to win the 1237 delegate votes going into the convention, it then raises the question of how the convention will shake out.  Will it be Ted Cruz or someone else like John Kasich?  It should be remembered that Kasich has even less committed delegates than Marco Rubio, who has already dropped out.

Republican voters realize that ultimately it will come down to a delegate vote between Trump and Cruz.  In that scenario the political pros see a Cruz victory despite some party animosity toward Cruz, although such animosity is far less than that shown toward Trump.

The least likely scenario for the GOP convention would be some "White Knight" trotted out by the RNC to "save the day".  The RNC isn't stupid and that scenario will never play out.  The RNC is more likely to get behind Cruz, albeit reluctantly, who the RNC believes it can live with in the end and win the general election on November 8th.

The GOP will, in the end, move to support Ted Cruz after a first or second ballot.  In the end the nomination will go to the candidate who has played the primary process by the existing rules with the greatest political skill in the 50 states and other remaining U.S. territories and that candidate would be Ted Cruz.

Now all we can do is wait out the process to see which scenario comes to fruition.