In which we explain why the RNC is so nervous about Donald Trump.

So, you’re convinced that an extended primary process in 2012 doomed your candidate in the general election. Not your policies, not bad polling, not stupid comments by your candidate, and not demographics shifting away from your party, with your base literally dying off.

Okay, granted, the drawn out primary schedule didn’t exactly help Romney’s chances in 2012, but as I explained in a previous post, it wasn’t really the calendar but conservative and libertarian stalwarts simply refusing to concede in a timely fashion to a more moderate crown prince that was the real crippling factor.

Any so-called “establishment” candidate who manages to thread the needle this time around and win the nomination can expect the same treatment from those in the right wing of the party trampled upon. The bad blood is just starting to boil out there and the pot will be seething once the voting and caucusing starts.

But let’s set that aside for now. Whatever the motivation, whatever the reasoning, the RNC wanted a nomination process in place that would create momentum for the early front runner and allow the party to coalesce around their nominee-apparent sooner. So they set the rules in such a way that discouraged a chaotic mess of primaries up front and came out with an orderly rollout of four contests (IA, NH, SC, NV) during the first month and a modestly sized “Super” Tuesday to start the second month (AL, AK, AR, CO, GA, MA, MN, ND, OK, TN, TX, VT, VA, WY).

Note that at least eight or nine of these historically have demonstrated a more conservative bias in their support of candidates. Both Huckabee and Santorum ran well in several of these states.

The plan was to have everything wrapped up with a bow around it by the finish of the March 15 primaries, at the latest. By RNC rules, that is the first day upon which states can award delegates on a winner-take-all basis and Florida, Illinois and Ohio are among the prize states that day. In all 361 delegates will be on the block, but 56% of delegates will have already been bound by then, the lion’s share apportioned on Super Tuesday, March 1.

Prior to March 15, states can only award delegates on a proportional basis. But here’s the rub, as I noted a couple of days ago. Several of the states have thresholds, below which a candidate gets no delegates, regardless of his or her proportional share of the vote. Below, courtesy of Time Magazine, is what the race looks like after IA, NH, SC and NV.

So what’s the Trump nightmare scenario? The candidates below him all manage to stick around through Super Tuesday and divide up enough of the vote that Trump is the only candidate consistently over the threshold and he walks away with a ton of delegates.

The other scenario, and perhaps a little more likely, is that this quickly becomes a two person race between Trump and Cruz, the only other candidate to be polling above 15% nationally. Even under that scenario, Trump could walk into March 15 with enough momentum to sweep Florida, Illinois and Ohio, and that could be all she wrote. For that not to happen, Trump has to start a steady, and somewhat precipitous, fade over the next six weeks. No one in 2008 or 2012 was running this strong in the polls nationally, for so long and still leading this late in the game.

March 1 Super Tuesday (565 bound delegates)

• Alabama (50 total delegates/47 bound): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Alaska (28/25): Proportional with 13% threshold
• Arkansas (40/37): Proportional with 15% threshold
• Georgia (76): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Massachusetts (42/39): Proportional with 5% threshold
• Minnesota (38/35): Proportional with 10% threshold
• North Dakota (28/0): all delegates are officially unbound.
• Oklahoma Primary (43/40): Proportional with 15% threshold
• Tennessee (58/55): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Texas (155/152): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Vermont (16/13): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Virginia (49/46): Proportional
• Wyoming (29/0): all delegates are officially unbound

March 5 (145 bound delegates)

• Kansas (40): Proportional with 10% threshold
• Kentucky (45/42): Proportional with 5% threshold
• Louisiana (46/43): Proportional with 20% threshold statewide, no threshold for congressional district delegates
• Maine (23/20): Proportional with 10% threshold

March 8 (140 bound delegates)

• Hawaii Caucuses (19/16): Proportional
• Idaho Primary (32): Proportional with 20% threshold
• Michigan Primary (59/56): Proportional with 15% threshold
• Mississippi Primary (39/36): Proportional with 15% threshold

March 12 (19 bound delegates)

• District of Columbia Convention (19): Proportional with 15% threshold

March 15, 2016 (361 bound delegates)

• Florida (99): Winner take all
• Illinois (69): Statewide, winner take all, congressional district delegates elected directly
• Missouri Primary (52/49) – Winner take all above 50%, otherwise by congressional district
• North Carolina Primary (72/69) – Proportional
• Ohio Primary (66) –Winner take all