The GOP’s veep problem
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unconventional-no-1-the-gops-veep-problem-183429119.html
In a normal presidential election year, the parties tend to coalesce around their nominees long before the conventions. That, in turn, gives each standard-bearer several months to select a running mate. It’s all very polite and predictable.
But 2016 is not a normal presidential election year — to put it mildly. If none of the candidates arrive at the convention in Cleveland with a majority of delegates (for the first time since 1984) and no candidate manages to cobble together a majority on the first ballot either (for the first time since 1952), it will means chaos, maneuvering and multiple rounds of presidential balloting — which in turn almost guarantees that the GOP’s 2016 vice presidential candidate will be chosen in one of five very odd ways.
The first would be the Premature Pick — that is, a VP pick made before the party even chooses its presidential nominee. This is exactly what Ronald Reagan did when he selected Richard Schweiker in 1976. The former California governor was neck and neck with incumbent President Gerald Ford at the time, and his hope was that Schweiker, a moderate U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, would soothe fears about his Western conservatism and flip some middle-of-the-road delegates. If Trump, Cruz or Kasich were to name a running mate prior to the convention, they’d be jumping the gun for similarly self-serving reasons: to curry favor with the delegates who will ultimately decide their fate.
The second, third and fourth scenarios would all unfold at the convention itself. There’s the Unity Ticket, in which the first- and second-place finishers band together for the good of the party. There’s the Rushed Running Mate: a new figure who joins the ticket either (a) during the balloting process in Cleveland, or (b) shortly after the nomination is decided on the floor of the convention hall. (Imagine the usual weeks-long rollout procedure, only this time compressed into the most hectic and pivotal hours of the entire 2016 GOP contest, when the candidates and their overextended advisers will not have had nearly as much time as earlier campaigns to consider their options and control the unveiling.) And it’s also possible that a majority of delegates could nominate the party’s 2016 veep candidate by themselves — no matter what the presidential candidates do, say or want. (Call it a Convention’s Choice).
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