Could Republicans Block Trump From GOP Nomination?

Four criminal indictments. A massive lead in the polls. And a political establishment that is all but squarely lined up behind him.

In an unprecedented test for a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, the former president and current Republican frontrunner to take on Joe Biden in 2024, appears unstoppable, with all indications suggesting his daunting lead among Republican voters will remain steady no matter what happens to him between today and his likely nomination at next summer's Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

So the question remains: can anything be done to keep him from winning?

Voters, the ones who will decide the outcome of early caucuses and primaries in states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, remain firmly behind Trump in all major polls. Political parties have begun weighing changes to their nominating rules to make it easier for him to win at the party's convention—the only election that matters in the machinations of presidential nominating contests.

And while campaign finance reports show his legal bills are rapidly eating away at his formidable campaign war chest, his grassroots fundraising operation is unparalleled by any other candidate running, and will likely be enough to sustain him through any attacks his opponents lob at him.

Even the threat of prison, a silver bullet some have suggested could prevent Trump from winning, is likely not enough: the socialist Eugene Debs famously ran for president from a jail cell during the 1920 election cycle and still finished in third place. Other hypotheticals, like an ongoing lawsuit intended to disqualify Trump from running under the pretext of a violation of the 14^th Amendment, are considered longshots.

The power wielded by party delegates

Still, there are ways to potentially deny Trump the nomination, says Elaine Kamarck, an expert on the presidential nomination system at the Brookings Institution and a veteran of several presidential campaigns. It's just at this point, the most viable way to do so is largely theoretical.

While voters in individual states choose who they want their party's nominee to be at the ballot box, those voters aren't technically voting directly for who will win—they're voting for their state's preferred candidate in a larger conversation among top party officials at the national convention.

And while state party bylaws typically "bind" a certain number of delegates to back those candidates via a "winner take all" system or based on their share of the vote, nothing explicitly prevents those delegates from going rogue, and pulling their support for a candidate they believe would be more viable in a general election environment. And it's happened numerous times.

"There's a lot of history that delegates were basically free to do what they wanted to do," Kamarck told Newsweek in an interview. "They were sort of free agents."

The 1980 Democratic National Convention famously devolved into chaos when Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts tried to deny President Jimmy Carter his party's nomination in an open convention, arguing his approach was too moderate for the modern Democratic party. (Kennedy would go on to receive just under 35 percent of all delegates at the convention, while Carter would go on to lose the general election by nearly 10 points.)

Then there was the 2016 Republican National Convention, where a group of "Never Trumpers" sought to block the adoption of convention rules to free up several factions of delegates who opposed Trump in an effort to deny him the nomination. (That effort failed, and several figures named in the attempt—including current Wyoming Congresswoman Harriett Hageman and longtime Oregon national committeeman Solomon Yue—are now firm backers of the former president.)

Such a loophole is not a flaw; it is a feature, Kamarck said, intended to allow party leaders the ability to change the direction of their party if a plurality of state-level leaders decide the people's choice might not be the best choice.

While former North Carolina Governor John Edwards did not win in the 2008 Democratic primaries, he was at one point in time a genuine contender, finishing ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses and third in several others. However, in January, Edwards suspended his campaign after a drop in polling that coincided with revelations of an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer while his wife was battling cancer. By August, Edwards—now long out of the race—was publicly acknowledging the affair on 60 Minutes in an interview with Bob Woodward, his political career essentially over.

Which begs the question: what would Democrats have done if he'd won?

"Imagine if he had actually won Iowa and was amassing delegates," Kamarck said. "This story probably would have broken in June, as opposed to breaking in August when it did. And if it broke into June, before the Democrats were in convention there's no doubt in my mind that a substantial portion would say, 'Let's dump this guy and sign somebody else.'"

With four criminal indictments and the very real prospect of jail time on the horizon, Trump should, theoretically, be facing his John Edwards moment. But times have changed. While polling by firms like Ipsos shows the Republican Party squarely divided on whether Trump should even be charged with crimes, a clear majority sees his recent indictments as politically motivated, while just one-fifth of Republicans believe Trump should suspend his campaign.

Meanwhile, Trump's position in the polls has only continued to rise, an indication that Republicans don't just see Trump's indictment as an issue for his campaign; they see it as a central motivation for why he needs to win.

"Trump is benefiting not only from the Republican base rallying around him but also conservative media," Mallory Newall, vice president of public polling at Ipsos, told Newsweek in an interview. "The talking point after every indictment—and we see this borne out in our polling—is that these indictments are a witch hunt, that they're politically motivated. And I think to a certain extent, that's more red meat to throw at the base that, right now, I think Trump is benefiting from. Everyone else is kind of in a distant second or third tier and are trying to catch up."

Still, Trump can't escape from the reality that his campaign carries real baggage, Kamarck said. And it may prove to be a mistake for his contenders to forget it.

In 2016, supporters of Bernie Sanders—who finished second to Hillary Clinton—argued he'd lost out on his party's nomination largely due to the influence of unbound "superdelegates" that were not bound to support either candidate. And in 1984, Gary Hart, who was surging in polls at the time, was robbed of superdelegates to the convention in a state he'd won by supporters of eventual nominee Walter Mondale, who was ultimately able to outlast Hart through a war of attrition all the way to the DNC.

In the words of the immortal Yogi Berra: the game ain't over 'til it's over.

"The point is we don't really know who comes in second in Iowa. But I can tell you whoever comes in second in Iowa is very important. And then the question becomes whether Trump shows himself to be vulnerable in New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina, it's a race. By any measure, he is a damaged, high-risk candidate."