This weekend Donald Trump woke up to the fact that the method for choosing delegates to national conventions is the sort of arcane and deliberately complicated process that rewards campaigns that know how to play the game and punishes those that don’t. But amid his outrage, he ought to give a thought as to how his conduct is fueling efforts to “steal” the nomination from him. After a week in which he demonstrated not once, but twice, that he is a dangerously ignorant about foreign policy while also engaging in vicious personal attacks that have brought American politics to a new low, he needs to consider the possibility that the lower he sinks, the more incentives those involved in delegate selection will have to deny him the nomination by fair means or foul.

What happened was that, as the Wall Street Journal reported, although Trump won the Louisiana primary by 3.6 percent, the rules didn’t give him any more delegates than the second-place finisher, Ted Cruz. What’s more the selection process for the actual delegates, including some that weren’t allocated by the results, may mean that Cruz walks away with 10 more delegates from the state than Trump.

Trump is crying foul about this and he’s right. The Republican process is not nearly as crooked as the Democrats with their several hundred unelected superdelegates. But it is still designed to favor party machines and well-organized campaigns with ground games and to punish those who disdain such things and rely on earned media and the candidate’s celebrity to carry them through. Which means that Cruz has an edge in these battles over Trump.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Four years ago, similar tactics allowed the well-organized Ron Paul campaign managed to pull a great many more delegates than he should have in states where he lost. But in a nomination race where the outcome isn’t close — which is to say every Republican contest since 1976 — it hasn’t really mattered. But with Trump by no means assured of winning the 1,237 delegates he needs for a majority and a first ballot win, every one “stolen” from him in this manner really hurts.

Perhaps next year, during the postmortem for the next Republican defeat in a presidential contest (something that seems fairly inevitable given the likelihood that Trump will either be the nominee or that his followers will march out of the GOP if he is denied the nomination at the convention in Cleveland), changing the rules to make this system more uniform or fair would be a good idea. But for now, the question is how much this effort will influence the outcome of the race heading to Cleveland?

The answer is that it will depend on how well Trump does in the remaining primaries. If he wins, most of them and amasses the pledged delegates he needs to gain a majority, the nomination will be his no matter what shenanigans go on during the selection process for unallocated delegates in various states where Cruz’s superior ground game will give him a clear advantage. At the moment, that will require him to win about 54 percent of the delegates yet to be awarded. Can he do it? Given the advantage he has believed to have in New York and New Jersey — two of the biggest states yet to be contested — and the fact that Cruz and John Kasich are still splitting the anti-Trump vote, he has an excellent chance of doing so.

But it is by no means a certainty and, with the national polls tightening up and with Cruz even or ahead in states like Wisconsin and California (the biggest prize available), he may well fall short.

If he isn’t that far away from the number required for the nomination, I wouldn’t bet on Trump not being able to cut bargains for the votes he needs. He may not know what he’s talking about when it comes to most policy issues, but we all are aware of his ability to cut a deal as well as the fact that a lot of the political class can be bought one way or the other. But he and his supporters also need to be aware that the question of securing the loyalty of unpledged delegates or those who have been won by other candidates — like Marco Rubio — that have dropped out shouldn’t be viewed separately from the controversies that plague Trump’s candidacy.

Trump’s large lead should have dictated a toning down of his attacks and an attempt, however feeble, on his part to play the part of a would-be president. But whether he believes the situation still warrants cutthroat tactics such as his incredibly sleazy attack on Mrs. Cruz and unleashing his tabloid friends to smear the Texas senator’s character, or that he is simply incapable of changing his spots, Trump isn’t altering his behavior.

It can be argued it would be foolish for him to change tactics now since his willingness to say anything and to do anything to take out an opponent is a big piece of his appeal for a lot of voters. But if he thinks his gutter tactics will have no impact on the clandestine battle about convention rules, delegate selection, or the willingness of those not already obligated to vote for him in Cleveland, he’s deeply mistaken.

In the aftermath of his sweeping victories in March, it seemed as if the stop Trump movement was quickly becoming a waste of time. Some mainstream Republicans were making noises about holding their noses and making their peace with Trump and a few were jumping on the bandwagon.

But after Trump’s performances in his Washington Post and New York Times foreign policy interviews, he has been exposed again as a candidate that is utterly unprepared to be president and in favor of measures that range, as our Max Boot wrote on Sunday, from the foolish to dangerous.

If that wasn’t bad enough, his antics with Cruz are so despicable (on Sunday he continued attacking Heidi Cruz on ABC’s “This Week” program) that they are further embittering other Republicans while also dooming him with female voters. He is trailing far behind Hillary Clinton in all of the head-to-head matchups raising the very real possibility that he will lead the GOP to a landslide defeat in November.

These are not so much arguments against his candidacy — his shortcomings have been obvious from the start of the campaign — as they are becoming a rock-solid justification for those seeking to deny him the nomination by any possible stratagem whether it is perceived as fair or not.

All of this would be averted by Trump winning most of the upcoming primaries. But if he doesn’t, he may be in bigger trouble than he thinks.

It’s true that his followers might actually riot in Cleveland and it’s almost certain that many will walk out of the convention if he isn’t nominated. But by acting in a manner that will make it impossible for many other Republicans to support or even to vote for him, a GOP schism is probably inevitable anyway.

Had he been able to strike a presidential tone, studied up on the issues or, at least, tried to behave, it would have been harder for the so-called establishment to engage in maneuvers designed to thwart him. But by doubling down on the ignorance as well as the sleaze, Trump is pretty much daring the rest of the party to do its worst. Under the circumstances, he should not be surprised if they take him up on that challenge. And given his campaign’s lack of attention to the arcane process of delegate selection as opposed to the business of winning primaries, he should also not be surprised if they are successful.

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