By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--February 29, 2016
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Marco Rubio's campaign is preparing for a contested Republican Convention as one option to take the GOP nomination away from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, his campaign manager told top donors at a closed-door meeting in Manhattan Wednesday night. As Rubio scrambles for support ahead of Super Tuesday, Terry Sullivan, Rubio's top adviser, used a Power Point presentation and took questions from attendees to lay out the two courses that Rubio's quest for the GOP nomination could take in the coming months, two people present told CNN, speaking anonymously to share details from a private meeting. The first showed the number of states and delegates Rubio would need to clinch the nomination outright before July's convention. The second was the scenario in which none of the candidates gain the simple majority delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the convention, unleashing a messy and potentially unpredictable battle where multiple candidates are vying for the title.Now, I realize that this sounds pretty ugly - and suspiciously like the Democrat's current "superdelegate" problem regarding Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders - but I also understand the reasoning. The fears about "candidate Donald Trump" are legitimate. Anyone who watched last night's debate should have no illusions about Trump's performance. You may have liked it, but if he turns in a similar performance during a one-on-one with Hillary Clinton, he's going to be in severe trouble. Here's the interesting thing: Earlier this week, Mitt Romney was supposedly going to endorse Marco Rubio. Then it didn't happen. Instead, he began leveling speculative attacks against Trump suggesting there was a "bombshell" lurking in Trump's taxes. This was odd since Harry Reid did basically the exact same thing to Romney back in 2012.
Mitt Romney on Wednesday raised questions about Donald Trump's taxes that strikingly resembled attacks used against the former GOP presidential nominee four years ago. "Frankly, I think we have a good reason to believe that there's a bombshell in Donald Trump's taxes," Romney said in an interview on Fox News. "I think there's something there. Either he's not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is or he hasn't been paying the kind of taxes we would expect him to pay, or perhaps he hasn't been giving money to the vets or to the disabled like he's been telling us he's doing," he added.Immediately pundits started suggesting that Romney's attacks were an attempt to stall Trump's momentum and dissuade further endorsements. I disagree. ....I think this is step one in the "brokered convention" plan. Let's say that Trump runs the table through the rest of the primaries. Polling suggests that's possible, if not likely, so he would emerge from the primaries as a real powerhouse. There's no way to walk into the convention and try to undo that in a surprise move. You’d be ripped to shreds by the base …unless you'd spent months setting the stage. Since we all suspect Romney is in Rubio's corner, I submit that the candidate isn't the only person preparing for a convention fight. The party is too, and their previous presidential pick - considered by many to be the current face of the GOP Elite - appears to be laying the groundwork.
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