Will GOP step in to prevent a Newt Gingrich nomination?

"Here’s the thing," Rubin writes in her blog, outlining why she finds a surging Gingrich so untenable. "The voters in their infinite wisdom have just given a huge boost to perhaps the only GOP candidate who could shift the spotlight from President Obama to himself, alienate virtually all independent voters, lose more than 40 states and put the House majority in jeopardy."

So, could a brokered, or open, convention really happen? And could a dark-horse candidate still enter the race? It's certainly not inconceivable, although Mr. Steele's 50-50 odds seem a bit high.

A brokered convention is one in which no candidate has a majority of pledged delegates by the time of the convention, and so the nominee gets decided at the convention by a series of votes, re-votes, and political horse trading. Pledged delegates can be freed from their allegiance, and in practice, it would be party elites who decide the nominee.

They weren't uncommon before the current binding primary system was put in place (both Adlai Stevenson, a Democrat, and Thomas Dewey, a Republican, were selected in brokered conventions in 1952 and 1948). Since then, they're often discussed but the only open convention to occur was in 1976, when Republican delegates went to their convention unsure if they'd be nominating Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford. (Ford managed to win on the first ballot, avoiding a truly brokered convention.)

"A brokered convention might be a lot of fun in theory, but right now it’s just a theory," wrote Aaron Blake in the Washington Post earlier this month, as he explained the many ways Romney could rack up a large majority of delegates even without widespread popular support. (Mr. Blake's piece was written before Gingrich's latest surge.)

Polling expert Nate Silver, meanwhile, discusses the possibility at length in the New York Times' FiveThirtyEight blog, and gives it a real – if somewhat long shot – chance.

"Late-entry candidates and brokered conventions have not occurred in the recent past," writes Mr. Silver. "But there has also not been a case in the recent past in which a candidate like Mr. Gingrich, so vehemently opposed by party elites, was surging ahead in key national and state polls at this stage of the nomination process."

Moreover, he notes, it might have a lot of appeal to some in the GOP elite: "It would not just be a ploy to prevent Mr. Gingrich’s nomination. "It would also open the door to the party’s nominee being someone like Mr. Daniels or [former Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush or [Wisconsin Congressman Paul] Ryan – candidates whom some influential conservatives have preferred to Mr. Romney all along.

So what will happen? If the last few months have taught journalists anything, it's that making predictions is a dangerous business.

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