Comrade Frum Ponders on a Brokered Convention

What if Romney Cannot Seal the Deal? In the Old Days that meant a Brokered Convention where the Party Leaders brokered the selection of the nominee by throwing their states' delegates to one guy or the other.

Frum's diagnosis is close to mine:

The big change in American politics over the past two decades has been the decline of followership. Party members expect the party to serve them -- one major reason that both parties have drifted to the ideological extremes since the 1970s.

That expectation would only be intensified and concentrated in a party convention with Fox News and talk radio whipping and riling the delegates into angry emotionalism.

A decision-making convention in modern times won't submit to the edicts of smoke-filled rooms. The delegates will want their own way.

If Romney fails to win the primaries over the next few months, brace yourself: not for a replay of 1920, when Republican bosses made their coldly calculated deal, but for a replay of 1896, when the Democratic Convention went wild for William Jennings Bryan after one thrilling speech. Of course, Bryan went on to lose in a landslide.

Bi-Metalism! Sweetness. William Jennings Bryan (version 3.0 - the post WWI version) is the father of movement conservatism so it is only fitting.

1920 was a great GOTP year. You had all sorts of backlash, in a tea party sort of way, against changes brought on by War Industrial Policy - which killed the progressive era. You had the Klan re-appearing and the associated bigotry against immigrants and Catholics. You had race riots in 1919 directed against African-Americans.

Couple these disruptions with the fact that Woodrow Wilson was playing the part of an total asshole during the campaign by flirting with running for a third term and dicking other democrats areoun and the GOTP had a virtual lock on the electorate.

Harding got the nod as the GOTP nominee by not pissing off the other 4-5 guys on the ballot ahead of him. This was his advisors plan from the git go of the convention. He would wait for a deadlock and offer himself an the least offensive alternative. It could have gone like this:

FAT CAT 1: "We are never going to agree on a candidate out of the top 3. They all hate each other. How about Harding, instead? He is not an asshole."

FAT CAT 2: "Sounds good to me. He really does not stand for anything, so he shouldn't piss people off. Besides nobody knows that he is a serial adulterer in the mold of Newt Gingrich, whoever that is. People will learn about this fact after the scandals that happen during his first term."

So Fat Cat 1 and Fat Cat 2 got votes thrown to Harding and he won the nomination and then sleep walked to the Presidency. Now he is on the bottom of the list either just below or above George W Bush in the Presidential rankings - depending on who you ask.

Frum does not think there are folks who can deliver the votes today at a convention for the next Harding. Who is this year's version of Fat Cat 1 and Fat Cat 2? He would know better than I since he used to be friends with these characters before they kicked him out of the club.

To be continued.