CONVENTION RULES – AT 10:22 A.M. ET:   With so much buzz about a possible open Republican convention, we're starting to learn the intricacies of the convention process.  This whole thing could come down to a handful of votes.  From The Hill:

The possibility of a contested convention has put the spotlight on the unbound delegates who could determine the Republican presidential nominee.

Several unbound delegates told The Hill they are beginning to feel the pressure, now that party leaders are talking about a convention scenario that could prevent Donald Trump from winning the nomination.

"I’ve received hundreds of emails and I’m getting phone calls from people telling me who they think should be president and why," said Steve House, the chairman of the Republican Party in Colorado and an unbound delegate.

Under Republican Party rules, delegates from states that hold presidential primaries must be bound by those results. Those delegates must back their candidate for at least the first ballot at the GOP convention in Cleveland in July.

But many delegates — potentially close to 200 — are not bound by those rules.

A handful of states and territories — Colorado and North Dakota among them — chose not to hold a vote at all, which means most of their delegates will arrive at the convention free to cast their ballot for any candidate.

And in some states, the delegates who were bound to candidates no longer in the race — such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio — are unbound as well.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's a good primer.  Open conventions are great fun, and you may be sure the TV journalists are praying for one, but they can embitter a party to the point where the national campaign is fatally damaged.  It happened to the Democrats in 1968.  And the anger in the Republican Party today is already boiling over.

March 21, 2016