Would it work? And would the RNC even execute this plan if it came to that?

Ted Cruz tried this Hail Mary play in 2016 first, attempting to get his convention delegates in control of the RNC convention rules committee. Cruz’ attempt to open the Republican presidential nomination to the floor by releasing the delegates failed, and the rest is history, so to speak.

At the time, Cruz didn’t get much sympathy (except from die-hard Trump opponents) for his plan to subvert the months-long process in which voters made their clear choice for Trump. The proposal would have essentially invalidated the idea of popular choice for the nomination. But what happens if the nominee becomes unelectable in the course of the primaries — and especially between the primaries and the convention?

Enter Cruz Option II, Felony Boogaloo:

If Mr. Trump holds his dominant polling advantage throughout the primaries but then a jury transforms him into a convicted felon, any forces within the G.O.P. that would want to use that development to stop him would have one last opportunity to block his nomination — the same end-run around voters that officials tried at the party convention in 2016. …

“Given what’s happening on the legal front, state parties need to think about what options they’re giving themselves” to allow delegates flexibility at the party’s national convention, said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey who advises the super PAC supporting Chris Christie and who opposes Mr. Trump.

Republican state parties have until Oct. 1 to submit their formal delegate allocation rules to the national committee.

“All this is happening so quickly, it’s unprecedented, and so as states formulate what their rules are going to be,” Mr. Palatucci added, “everybody’s got a whole new set of circumstances to consider.”

Granted, Chris Christie’s campaign would have a vested interest in this kind of rule, because that would be Christie’s only path to the nomination in this cycle. Even if the RNC created this Break Glass In Case of Emergency plan and then executed it, though, Christie’s chances would be somewhere between slim and none, with slim barely discernible in the distance.

Let’s walk through this proposed scenario with three assumptions: (a) Trump has won enough delegates to win the nomination, (b) the state committees that are dominated by MAGA supporters actually agreed to this in October 2023, and (c) Trump gets convicted of a felony before the convention. The RNC would still have to hold some sort of floor vote to activate this plan at the convention — in a room full of Trump delegates who are likely angry over the trial(s). And then, someone would have to convince them to vote for a replacement candidate while Trump and millions of his voters complain from the sidelines that his election is being stolen from him again — this time by the RNC and Republican establishment.

Anyone think that Christie would be the natural option under these circumstances? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Assuming that this kind of floor reset took place, the beneficiary would be the second-place finisher in delegates, because it would have to be. That position is not likely to be held by a candidate without some conservo-populist cred, a description that doesn’t apply to Christie, nor to Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, or even much to Doug Burgum or Tim Scott. In the first place, the runner-up’s delegates would still constitute a significant bloc of those floor votes. If it came to a floor vote, the runner-up would have the numeric and the moral advantage.

On that latter point, if the RNC bypassed both the first and second-place finishers in the primaries to nominate someone from the sidelines, they would essentially disenfranchise the entire primary-voting electorate. A Trump felony conviction might be enough to excuse an intervention, but what would explain bypassing the candidate who won the next-highest number of delegates? To put it succinctly, it would look very, very swampy, and combining that with an act of removing Trump from the ticket would create a rift that would likely cripple the GOP for years.

In fact, the short-term ramifications of such a move at the convention likely force the RNC to prevent it from happening — even if the rules allowed for it. It would create an explosive internecine feud within the GOP four months before a national election that would impact races all the way down the ballot. The split would likely have millions refusing to turn out in protest of such a move; Republicans would lose in a landslide, and that effect might carry over into the next election cycle and more. It would be the nuclear option, to be used only in case of imminent destruction — and once used, the ground would never be the same. It might even demolish the Republican Party, no matter how well-intentioned the effort may be.

Granted, the nomination of a convicted felon to the party’s presidential ticket would also likely be a disaster too, strategically and arguably morally as well (YMMV). But if that’s what primary voters chose, that responsibility belongs to them, or so the RNC can and likely will reason. Keeping the nomination tied to primary contests would almost certainly mean losing the White House in this instance, but with a reasonably united party otherwise that retains some ability to compete down-ballot.

And at its heart, such a move would drastically redefine the nominating process, at least for Republicans. In a bygone era, state conventions elected delegates they trusted through multiple levels of caucuses to decide on nominees in a form of representative democracy at the party level. For many decades now, however, the nominating process only has retained the trappings of representative democracy while functionally operating as a direct democracy. Delegates are locked in as stand-ins for specific candidates, not as representatives with full range of choice. To suddenly revert back to the 19th-century model of nominating conventions — and at the last minute, after voters turned out in anticipation that their votes mattered in the final choice — would be a kind of bait-and-switch fraud in which Trump voters in particular would legitimately feel hoodwinked.

(As an aside, it would at least finally provide an accurate differentiation between the Republican and Democrat labels, so there’s that.)

Needless to say, Cruz Option II: Felony Boogaloo has as much chance of ever coming to fruition as Cruz Option I did, especially after eight years of Trump party control at the national and state levels. The best option for Republicans to avoid another Trump nomination would be to, well, get their voters to choose someone else. Unlike in 2015, there are solid choices now without ties to the party establishment and who have actual track records of conservo-populist governance, notably Ron DeSantis and Doug Burgum, and foreign-policy experience in Nikki Haley.

To do that, the RNC and its constituent organizations will have to stop fundraising off of Trump’s legal issues and start aligning themselves more neutrally. If they signal that they’re ready to move on from the Trump era, perhaps their voters will follow as well.

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Should we focus on who won or lost the debate? Or should we focus on what strategies the candidates used, and what those reveal?
• Andrew Malcolm argues that both DeSantis and the GOP primary electorate need to take the “long road” approach, and more or less agree about Ramswamy.
• I also regale Andrew with the harrowing tales of my jury duty this week, and more!

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!