Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won all 34 of the delegates in Colorado yesterday as he continues his goal of doing all he can to win the second ballot at a contested in Cleveland. Meanwhile, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he will amass the necessary 1,237 delegates to clinch the GOP nomination before the party’s convention in July.
“We want to get to the 1,237, and I think we will have a very good chance to get there. We expect to get there, actually,” Trump said during a radio interview with John Catsimatidis that aired Sunday.
Trump’s campaign has revised its targets to make the GOP front-runner the party’s presumptive nominee by mid-May and win him the delegates needed to lock down the nomination before the convention.
“Our target date is June 7, but our goal is in the middle of May to be the presumptive nominee,” said Paul Manafort, Trump’s new convention manager who appeared on ABC Sunday morning. The battle between Trump and Cruz is bound to be an epic one.
Trump would need to win 60 percent of the remaining delegates between now and then to pass the 1,237 mark early he will likely have to wait until June 7, after voting in California and New Jersey, to officially secure the nomination.
House Speaker Paul Ryan could be the third of fourth ballot alternative and he is the favorite of the Republican establishment. But Ryan keeps saying he has no interest in being the party nominee but he also seems to be doing many interviews that seem like a candidate.
Why would delegates sworn to Cruz or Trump be willing to abandon either candidate for Paul Ryan? Can you imagine Donald or Ted letting Ryan walk in at the last minute to snatch the nomination away? There would be an open revolt among the delegates.
More to the point, Ryan is exactly the kind of establishment Republican that the majority of voters in the GOP primary have rejected multiple times: Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are the two prime examples.
Moreover, right now Ryan is under assault from the very same Tea Party contingent that brought down John Boehner. So, if Trump can’t win the 1,237 delegates then the July convention in Cleveland will be the scene of an interesting political showcase.