BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from The Washington Times

Here’s a thought: The GOP presidential primaries may well prove to be inconclusive, with the nominee actually being chosen at the convention in Tampa, Fla., in the fourth week of August next year.

True, it has been generations since a presidential nominating convention actually made that decision, although, admittedly, this idea pops up every four years. The last contested GOP convention that went beyond the first ballot was 1948, when Thomas Dewey was chosen on the third ballot – and went on to lose to Harry Truman. For the Democrats it was 1952, when Adlai Stevenson was chosen also on the third ballot – and went on to lose to Dwight Eisenhower. The longest was the Democratic convention of 1924 that went on for more than two weeks and took 103 ballots to nominate John Davis, who lost to Calvin Coolidge.

There may be a pattern there. As G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young point out in their insightful Dec. 6, 2007, article “What if the conventions are contested?” “It is no coincidence that brokered conventions ended after networks began to televise them. The 1952 convention is instructive. Actually settled on the first ballot when Dwight Eisenhower beat Robert Taft, the intraparty brawling that preceded the Eisenhower victory appalled thousands who watched it on TV.”

In fact, hotly contentious conventions – whether the GOP in 1912 or the riotous Democratic Chicago convention in 1968 – often augur poorly for the general election. But whether good news or bad, five odd features of this season’s GOP primary process suggest inconclusiveness. Continue reading →