The GOPs worst nightmare

(CNN) — As John Avlon has recently calculated, there is a real possibility that the Republican primary process could fail to yield a majority winner.

What would happen then?

Journalists like to speculate about “brokered conventions”: the kind of conventions we had 50 and 100 years ago, where party bosses chose presidential nominees in smoke-filled rooms. But you can’t have a “brokered convention” in a system where there are no “brokers.”

Here’s an example of how the old system worked:

In 1952, most rank-and-file Republicans wanted to nominate Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, the leader of the party’s conservative wing.

But about three-quarters of the states had neither primaries nor caucuses. Their delegates were chosen at state party conventions, and those delegates answered to powerful state officeholders, typically the state governor.

So when the GOP convened in Chicago in 1952, those powerful state officeholders could negotiate among themselves, confident that they controlled the delegate count from their state.

That’s how Eisenhower won in 1952. The two most powerful Republican governors in the country — Thomas Dewey of New York and Earl Warren of California — preferred Eisenhower, and so Eisenhower it was.

That’s not how it would happen today.

Modern governors do not control their state parties the way governors did in the 1950s. And today’s delegates won’t do as they are told.

What would happen today?