Let the People Decide

Within hours of Justice Antonin Scalia's death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that we should let the American people have a voice in the selection of his replacement and wait until the next president is inaugurated. Many other prominent establishment Republicans echoed this approach -- "let the people decide."

Let's forget that the American people did have a voice by twice electing Barack Obama by a convincing margin.

What's especially notable about this bald-faced political scheme is that the establishment GOP, faced with Donald Trump as its front-runner and universally despised Ted Cruz in second place, is exploring any possible tactic to have an "establishment" candidate as its nominee.

Doing the math, Trump needs 55% of remaining delegates to win a majority, Cruz 59 percent, Rubio 69 percent and Kasich 77 percent. Given that Rubio has only won one state to date plus Puerto Rico and Kasich hasn't won any, the chance that either of them will win the nomination outright is virtually nil. Thus, the only hope for the establishment GOP is for neither Trump nor Cruz to get an overall majority and for Rubio or Kasich (or Ryan or Romney) to be picked in a brokered convention. This seems to be the plan embraced by those advocating the #NeverTrump strategy. But if the final vote/delegate totals are anything like they currently are, with Trump at 43 percent of delegates, Cruz at 34 percent, Rubio at 17 percent and Kasich at 4 percent, it would require the GOP to egregiously ignore its own primary voters to have anyone but Trump (or potentially Cruz) as its nominee.

If the GOP were to ignore the primary results and pick an establishment candidate as the nominee in a brokered convention, it will directly show the obvious -- that they couldn't care less about letting the people decide.