The betting markets seem to be coming around to the realization that it is highly unlikely that anyone but Donald Trump or Ted Cruz will be the Republican nominee. Not that betting markets are anything but a brass tacks version of conventional wisdom. But the perception is correct. We seem to be in a period where Republican party stakeholders are taking an inordinate amount of glee in pointing out that as long as Donald Trump doesn’t clearly win more than 50% of the pledged delegates they can really do anything they want in Cleveland. This is true. But the logic is like getting out of putting up your relatives by burning your house down.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the entire election cycle is that Republicans seem to have managed what a month or more ago seemed all but impossible: blocking Trump from securing the nomination outright. But that came at the expense of empowering Ted Cruz. He became their weapon of choice, the only feasible tool to deny Trump delegates, not only at the ballot box but just as much in the battle for ‘dark delegates’. In some ways the more interesting battle now is not Trump vs the Republican establishment but the Republican establishment vs Cruz as they look for a way to get him to cough up the delegates they have helped and allowed him to garner.
