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Party Rules to Streamline Race May Backfire for G.O.P.
Donald J. Trump in Rochester, N.H., on Thursday. The Republican establishment sees his nomination as a serious possibility.Credit Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — When gloomy Republican Party leaders regrouped after President Obama’s 2012 re-election, they were intent on enhancing the party’s chances of winning back the White House. The result: new rules to head off a prolonged and divisive nomination fight, and to make certain the Republican standard-bearer is not pulled too far to the right before Election Day.

But as the sprawling class of 2016 Republican presidential candidates tumbled out of their chaotic second debate last week, it was increasingly clear that those rule changes — from limiting the number of debates to adjusting how delegates are allocated — had failed to bring to the nominating process the order and speed that party leaders had craved.

In interviews, Republican leaders and strategists said that rather than having a presumptive nominee by early 2016, who could turn to the tasks of raising money and making the case against the Democratic candidates, it was doubtful that a candidate would be in place before late spring — or even before Republicans gather for their convention in Cleveland in July.

Continue reading the main story Interactive Graphic Who’s Winning the Presidential Campaign? History suggests that each party’s eventual nominee will emerge from 2015 in one of the top two or three positions, as measured by endorsements, fund-raising and polling. Party Rules to Streamline Race May Backfire for G.O.P.

OPEN Interactive Graphic

And they said they were increasingly convinced that Donald J. Trump could exploit openings created by the party’s revised rules to capture the nomination or, short of that, to amass enough delegates to be a power broker at the convention.

“You’ve got a set of unintended consequences that weren’t planned for,” said Richard F. Hohlt, a Republican donor and Washington lobbyist. “So it’s going to be harder for a candidate to get to the magic number, which could open up the process to a convention situation.”

To some extent, this reflects forces beyond the party’s control. Conservative activists have shown little appetite for Republicans who play by traditional rules. They, and the right-tilting candidates they are supporting, may be in even less of a mood to acquiesce at a time when Republican leaders in Washington, despite controlling both houses in Congress, have been unable to stop or even slow Mr. Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran, and are struggling in their bid to deny funding to Planned Parenthood.

More than ever, too, the party is grappling with campaign finance laws that allow candidates with wealthy private backers, such as former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, to stay in the race even if they do poorly in early nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But the evolving Republican landscape also suggests that the party’s changes, like squeezing primaries into a shorter period in hopes that one candidate would break through, are proving no match for a field this big and rambunctious, powered by the forces of populism and anger at Washington, and financed by wealthy benefactors.

As a result, the campaigns are preparing for a marathon delegate battle, and have begun building organizations in territories as far-flung as Guam and American Samoa. An adviser to Mr. Cruz’s campaign, Dennis Lennox, has island-hopped through the Pacific this month, discussing local issues like the airfares between Honolulu and Pago Pago, in search of a stray delegate who might support the senator. And on a conference call with donors the morning after Wednesday’s debate, Danny Diaz, the manager for Mr. Bush’s campaign, ran down its operations in states well beyond New Hampshire and Iowa, according to a participant on the call.

The prospect of a long and contentious nomination fight is only one reason for concern. The three-hour debate, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near here, suggested that Republican leaders had yet to realize their hope of keeping primary contenders from moving far to the right, complicating a general election bid, as happened to Mitt Romney in 2012. The candidates staked out conservative positions on a variety of topics — immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage and vaccinations for children — that, if appealing in such early Republican states as Iowa and South Carolina, could prove problematic in a general election.

In the starkest sign of how unsettled the situation is, what once seemed unthinkable — that Mr. Trump could win the Republican nomination — is being treated by many within the Republican establishment as a serious possibility. And one reason his candidacy seems strong is a change by the party in hopes of ending the process earlier: making it possible for states to hold contests in which the winner receives all the delegates, rather than a share based on the vote, starting March 15, two weeks earlier than in the last cycle. Ten states have said they will do so.

If Mr. Trump draws one-third of the Republican primary vote, as recent polls suggest he will, that could be enough to win in a crowded field. After March 15, he could begin amassing all the delegates in a given state even if he carried it with only a third of the vote. And the later it gets, the harder it becomes for a lead in delegates to be overcome, with fewer state contests remaining in which trailing candidates can attempt comebacks.

“Somebody like Trump, who is operating in a crowded field, could put this contest away early if the crowd doesn’t thin out,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, who was a senior adviser to Mr. Romney.

Continue reading the main story

Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Senator John McCain of Arizona when he ran for president in 2008, said Mr. Trump could also be helped by the fact that candidates like Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, with thinner financial resources and therefore likelier to run out of money, are, like Mr. Trump, political outsiders. So their supporters would be more inclined to fall in behind Mr. Trump than, say, Mr. Bush or Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

“There is a bubble of delusion among Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C., with regard to their parties’ respective nominating processes,” Mr. Schmidt said. “There is no magic date upon which the air will come out of the Donald Trump balloon. The notion that Donald Trump cannot be the Republican nominee is completely and totally wrong.”

The Republican rule changes reflected the lessons learned from Mr. Romney’s defeat, after a long primary fight left him short of money and pulled to the right on issues, weakening him among undecided voters when he faced Mr. Obama. The party compressed its nominating calendar to try to make the process end sooner, limited the number of debates, moved the convention to July from August, barred all but the traditional early nominating states from holding contests until March and shortened the period in which states could hold primaries or caucuses that award delegates proportionally.

But this was a remedy for a very different campaign from the one now being waged. With 15 candidates in the field, and Mr. Trump at the center of the action, the debates have become ratings bonanzas for the networks and drawn record-setting viewership. And many states, eager to play a more influential role, seized the opportunity to schedule their nominating contests earlier. Eight states in the conservative-dominated South, where insurgent candidates like Mr. Trump could do well, have created a Super Tuesday on March 1, when delegates must still be awarded proportionally.

“It’s going to go on for a while,” said Karl Rove, a Republican strategist, noting how many delegates will have been distributed after the March 1 contests. “What happens if you have 30 percent of delegates already allocated and nobody has more than 25 percent of them?”

In Washington, some longtime Republican hands have begun conversations about how to handle a race that could last through the last day of voting on June 7, when five states representing about 15 percent of all delegates, including California and New Jersey, cast their ballots.

Republicans say the unpredictable Mr. Trump’s intentions are difficult to discern, speculating that he may not be willing to endure a monthslong delegate chase, and it remains unclear whether he has the organization to pull off any delegate wins.

But the fact that discussions about such arcane matters as bound versus unbound delegates are already taking place underscores the potential for chaos.

It also represents a grudging concession that Mr. Trump may not fade from the scene — and that even if he ultimately loses, he is likely to have enough delegates to be a force at the convention.

“There’s a growing sense that Donald is going to be in the final four,” said Phil Musser, a Republican strategist. “That means Donald with delegates. And Donald with delegates means an enhanced ability to shape the race.”

Some Republicans still wince when recalling how Pat Buchanan’s 1992 challenge to President George Bush resulted in his winning a prime-time speaking slot at the convention that renominated Mr. Bush.

“And that set the tone for the election,” Mr. Hohlt recalled of Mr. Buchanan’s fiery speech. “Do we end up again in one of those kinds of deals?”

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