GOP's worst nightmare -- a contested convention - CNN.com: The big change in American politics over the past two decades has been the decline of followership. Party members expect the party to serve them -- one major reason that both parties have drifted to the ideological extremes since the 1970s.
That expectation would only be intensified and concentrated in a party convention with Fox News and talk radio whipping and riling the delegates into angry emotionalism.
A decision-making convention in modern times won't submit to the edicts of smoke-filled rooms. The delegates will want their own way.
If Romney fails to win the primaries over the next few months, brace yourself: not for a replay of 1920, when Republican bosses made their coldly calculated deal, but for a replay of 1896, when the Democratic Convention went wild for William Jennings Bryan after one thrilling speech. Of course, Bryan went on to lose in a landslide.