Post debate wrap and potential convention shenanigans

Another debate happened today, it was an obvious hit job by Fox against Trump, and probably didn't work, it did a great job of exposing his weaknesses, but the completely blatant attacks from the moderators targeted pretty much exclusively on him are probably not going to fool anyone, though lord only knows at this point what will actually happen, if the Republican voters have shown anything in this election cycle it is that not even Trump can command them reliably, as we saw in Iowa and a few other states during Super Tuesday.
The rest of the candidates are clearly angling for a contested convention at this point, I think Kasich even came right out and said it, though I could be misremembering that.

I should talk about what I mean when I say contested, or brokered, convention. The Republican primary process ends at the Republican National Convention in July, at that point the delegates all cast their vote for the candidate they were bound to represent by the results of the primaries from their specific states. The current rules of the convention require that the eventual nominee get a majority of the delegates, not a plurality, but a majority, it is this distinction that the current crop of candidates are relying on. Anyway, if after the first ballots are cast, no candidate has a majority of the votes, then the madness begins.
All delegates are now unbound and may vote for whomever they please, they may vote for any of the current candidates, or they can literally pick any other person they want, which leads to hilarious scenarios like Mitt Romney getting nominated again.

As it stands now, Trump has something like 45% of the available delegates, the field hopes to keep him down below 50% by the convention, how likely is it? Not very, see many of the states that are yet to vote do not have a proportional delegate system, all of their delegates go to the winner of the state primary, and none go to the runners up, of key interest are Kasich's home state of Ohio, and Florida, domain of Rubio. These states have a lot of delegates and are winner take all states, if Trump wins either or both of them his path to majority is pretty much clear, currently Trump is roughly neck and neck with Kasich, and outpolling Rubio in Florida by nearly twenty points, if Rubio can't close this gap, then the establishment has lost any way to subtly ratfuck Trump out of the primary.

But.

 None of this is required by law, the RNC sets whatever rules it wants to, and those rules are changeable at the convention. And this is why the Cleveland police department is buying a shitload of riot gear. The rules can be changed by a vote of the delegates, those delegates are party officials bound by their rules to vote for their candidate on the first ballot, but that is not the same thing as being a supporter of that candidate and they are not required to vote in his favor for any rules change. So if the RNC wanted to do something like change the number of delegates required to win the nomination, or to refuse to seat a certain state, or candidates, delegates, or even to unbind a certain amount of delegates on the first vote, they can if they can get a majority of the delegates to agree.

Will they attempt it if it comes down to it? I have no idea, this primary has gone like no other in modern history, the candidates are a combination of hated and incompetent in a way that we have never seen before, the base is fractured and so is the leadership, basically anything can happen and if any ratfucking happens it is going to end the GOP as we know it, but if Trump gets the nomination it might just do the same thing.

Oh, I keep using the word ratfuck, mostly because I like it, but it actually is a real political term! It's been used a fair bit since the 70's, but in various contexts we've seen it for the last hundred years, obviously rarely used by politicians in public though. It mean about what you'd think it means in this context: Political dirty tricks.