Presidential Primary Odds – GOP Establishment Takes Aim at Trump

Progressing rapidly through the stages of grief, the Republican Party has burned through denial and anger, and right now is sitting on No. 3 – bargaining. And striking a deal with a higher power might be the only move that can stop Donald Trump from getting the GOP nomination.

Trump has become the nouveau riche Rodney Dangerfield character in the iconic 1980 movie Caddyshack, with establishment Republican Mitt Romney playing the pompous Ted Knight role. People who have run the party for decades have no idea where the boorish Trump came from, and even less idea how to get rid of him.

So they grope.

And groping involves Republican regulars cooking the books in hopes of somehow denying Trump the 1,237 convention delegates necessary to clinch the nomination on the first ballot. Then, amid the chaos of the first contested convention since 1976, the GOP also needs to find a palatable substitute for Trump while at the same time preventing the multi-millionaire’s outraged supporters from going full-blown Ferguson on the entire city of Cleveland.

No small task.

An odd amalgam of party regulars has finally risen up in an 11th-hour effort to cut off Trump at the pass. The anti-Trump brigade includes money men (the Koch Brothers), former presidential nominees (Romney and John McCain), former Bush brain Karl Rove, and former primary opponent Lindsey Graham.  (Conservative media is a little trickier, because Fox News and talk radio fear being cut off from access more than they fear Trump starting World War III.) There is even talk of the party going rogue and financing a third-party run (Romney? Paul Ryan?) to prevent the down-ballot carnage that it believes a Trump nomination would bring.

For his part, Trump continues his P.T. Barnum tour of the Lower 48, remaining true to his message: “I’m awesome, and anyone who doesn’t think I’m awesome should just take a look at either the polls or my wife.” Both are, well, awesome.

Trump heads into Tuesday’s voting with 255 more delegates than Ted Cruz, and 110 more than Cruz and John Kasich combined. Dropout Marco Rubio still has a handful in his man purse, all of which means that Trump needs to gather a little more than 53-percent of delegates in the remaining states to reach the magic number.

Trump has a 13-point lead in Arizona, which has 58 winner-take-all delegates. He also has the backing of two state heavyweights: former governor Jan Brewer and hard-ass anti-immigration sheriff Joe Arpaio.

There is some support for Trump within the party. Concluding that it’s far less dangerous jumping on a train when it’s going 5 mph than getting run over by one moving at 150 mph, some former Trump opponents have reluctantly boarded his bandwagon. Chris Christie figures that Trump is his ticket out of New Jersey; Ben Carson may not be the brightest bulb in the country but he’s smart enough to recognize a soft landing spot when he sees one; Sarah Palin is also on board, for whatever that’s worth.

For his part, the candidate continues to put one foot in front of the other. If he is the least bit concerned about a contested convention or the party’s disjointed efforts to derail him, he just Tweets about possible riots. Or Romney’s 2012 loss to President Obama. Or a wall. Or Megyn Kelly’s journalistic ability. Or Bill Clinton. Anything to win the next news cycle.

Because the show must go on, even if the country has not yet reached the final stage of grief – acceptance.

To the odds!

Republican Primary Odds

Odds to win the Arizona Republican Primary:

Donald Trump: 1/10

Ted Cruz: 14/1

John Kasich: 30/1

Odds to win the Arizona Democratic Primary:

Hillary Clinton: 1/12

Bernie Sanders: 12/1

Odds to win the Utah Republican Caucuses:

Ted Cruz: 1/11

John Kasich: 20/1

Donald Trump: 25/1

Odds to win the Utah Democratic Caucuses: 

Hillary Clinton: 2/5

Bernie Sanders: 5/2

Odds to win the Idaho Democratic Caucuses:

Bernie Sanders: 12/11

Hillary Clinton: 11/12

Odds Trump wins the 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination before the GOP convention: 5/4

Odds Marco Rubio endorses Ted Cruz before March 26 (Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington voting date): 7/5

Odds a protester is attacked by a Trump supporter at a Trump rally in the next week: 2/1

Odds on the next candidate to drop out of the race:

John Kasich: 1/4

Bernie Sanders: 15/1

Ted Cruz: 20/1

No one will drop out before the conventions:  10/1

(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.)