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Monday, March 28, 2016

We hope your rules and wisdom choke you

The fact that "the rules" allow Cruz to come away with the most Louisiana delegates is no argument to sway or dissuade Trump's faction. Trump is playing a different sort of game here.
Trump complained about the "rotten political system" during a Sunday interview on ABC's "This Week."

"The Republican tabulation system is a broken system. It's not fair," he said.

"I won Louisiana and now I hear he's trying to steal delegates," Trump added, referring to Cruz. "What's going on in the Republican Party is a disgrace. I have so many more votes and so many more delegates."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Republican in Louisiana expect the five unbound delegates that had been awarded to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to back Cruz now that the Florida senator is out of the race. Cruz's supporters have also secured key positions on convention committees, which could help the Texas senator at a contested convention, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Jason Doré, the executive director of the Louisiana Republican primary, told the Times-Picayune that the party is "really confident in the rules" and is prepared for a lawsuit from Trump.
The party "is really confident in the rules," as if Donald Trump gives a shit about that.  The whole Trump phenomenon is about telling the rules to shut up.  Trump voters have a sense that their power as citizens is being subverted by elites in private clubs. They don't all understand the precise mechanism that allows for this but, instinctively, they are correct. The rules really are bad and the system really is rigged.Trump feeds off of the disaffection that arises from these facts.

So "knowing the rules" and playing by them is kind of beside the point. The rules are bad. The Trump campaign is about defying them. Trump and his people are very wrong about a great many things but this is not one of them. Every time Trump is jobbed by the screwy system, he is only validated anew in the eyes of his supporters.  And "welp, you should have known the rules" is no way to combat that.

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