They're gonna nominate Trump and focus on holding onto Congress.

Cruz, Trump, and Kasich are obvious choices.

I've heard people pulling for Romney and Ryan.

So how likely is Trump to win the nomination before the convention?

At the moment he needs 498 delegates out if the remaining 944 (over 50%) and he seems to be winning 40-50% of the votes in some states... Cruz can deny him the nomination (and does forcing a brokered convention help Cruz?)

Forcing a convention helps Cruz because he is less likely than Trump to win without it.

It's really much too late to run as a third party candidate after July or whenever the convention is due to ballot access issues. Plus some states have "sore-loser" laws which prohibit a candidate defeated in a party primary process from doing so. Trump may have a problem in that the actual delegates are chosen in most states by state conventions or state executive committees handpicked by the establishment, with no input from the actual candidate, so loyalties might be suspect. In South Carolina for example in order to be a delegate you have to have been a delegate at the 2015 South Carolina state convention, which took place prior to Trump becoming a candidate. Cruz is shrewd enough to be planning for this is and is keeping his primary/caucus organizations running in states that have already voted and is actively seeking out double-agents within the Trump camp. It's possible the NeverTrumpers manage to stack the deck prior to the actual convention with the Convention Committee on Credentials. Delegates pledged to Trump regardless of their personal wishes have the freedom to vote however they want on these issues, and could theoretically rule to disqualify Trump delegates if contests are challenged.

So I anticipate a whole bunch of shenanigans from the Anti-Trump people unless Trump wins this thing outright.

I don't think Ryan wants to risk his political career being parachuted in illegitimately through a convention heist. Romney on the other hand I think is showing that he is willing to do it.

Ryan will wait 4-8 years. Romney has been beaten twice, I don't see why he can win now.

"Romney on the other hand I think is showing that he is willing to do it."

Yes, that's certainly the suggestion/implication in British news media.

Romney is positioning himself, and being positioned by "the establishment" (that frighteningly murky phrase that people seem to find reassuring in contrast to Trump), to be the effective consensus candidate who can replace Trump if and when the time comes.

He can't but I think he's calculating he has the least to lose by "saving the party" from Trump and going down to the Democrats.

Thats probably true. In the long run, Romney losing will help the party more than Trump winning.

And Romney reactivated his campaign committees a few weeks ago.

Romney was a loser in 2012 and he's still a loser in 2016. I don't see why the GOP would put forward a proven loser who doesn't have the same fervor that either of the candidates he'd face (Hillary or Bernie) has, particularly in the face of inevitable backlash from a huge portion of the voter bloc. They'd be throwing the election in the same way that they have by allowing Donald Trump to do what he's done *and* alienating their base at the same time. If they're going to risk alienating so many of their voters, they should at the very least put forward someone who they think can help them recover those voters and potentially win in the general election.

The best thing for them to do is simply let Trump have this one and lick their wounds.

I think Any other candidate being nominated (and losing) while Trump still runs would destroy the republican party (even if Cruz didn't also run as the 'tea party' candidate... which seems less likely - but not impossible)

@Putin, interesting the hear about these 'sore-loser' laws. Where do i find out more?

From wiki: "In Michigan, one of the few states where this law applies to presidential elections as well..."

If this is the case, then surely Trump could in fact run (and potentially win a serious number of votes, if not win outright) if not nominated... (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sore-loser_law )

Having thought this through, i suspect i agree with Bo sox on this one.

The only question is, can the republican party survive, or is it splitting itself apart as we speak?

The Republican Party has been dead since Reagan took it over. Its roots were lost in the 1980s.

To answer your actual question, yes, it can survive, but not in the same capacity as it exists now. It is going to have to adapt. They are going to have to make the establishment label on their party disappear. Backing Trump, while it may make it painful for 4 or 8 years if he wins, is a good way to do that, and if he manages to lose, which I think he will, in the general election, then it's only a few months of cringing and biting their lip before it's back to business as usual rejecting anything and everything that the elected by-the-people Democratic president proposes.

Cruz doesn't want a brokered convention either.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/271875-cruz-brokered-convention-would-lead-to-voter-revolt

I don't think Cruz has a problem doing things that should theoretically lead to a voter revolt. He did, after all, shut down the entire government.

Cruz was against a brokered convention before he was for it.

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/ted-cruz-brokered-convention/2016/03/13/id/718873/

I mean the GOP political class wasn't going all-in for Cruz back on March 6, since then we've had clothespin 'endorsements' from the likes of Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush.

Cruz doesn't have a snowball's chance in Orlando, FL if it goes to the convention, because he's pretty universally recognized as the biggest gaping asshole in the Republican Party. If the Republicans are going to spite their own voters and not select as nominee the guy who won the most delegates, they sure as shit aren't going to do it for Ted Cruz, who leads them into every bit of the electoral debacle that Trump leads them into.

orathaic: "At the moment he needs 498 delegates out if the remaining 944 (over 50%) and he seems to be winning 40-50% of the votes in some states... Cruz can deny him the nomination"

Several of the remaining Republican primaries are winner-take-all. If most of those go for Trump, then it doesn't matter that he wins by 40%–50% of the vote.

Of the winner take alls Trump will likely take NJ, WV, and DE for a total of 101 delegates. Cruz will likely take MT, NE, and SD for 92 delegates. States like OR, WA, and NM will be evenly split. It's going to be tough for Trump to get to the magic number, he needs to win WI, IN, and PA.

Is there a site that shows the remaining states, delegates that can be won from them, and an explanation of the rules for winning in those states? A basic table could explain it all easily and would be extremely useful, but all the media coverage I've seen focuses only on what happens a week or two ahead. It's almost as if the media is intentionally making the process as murky as possible.

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/assessing-trumps-path-to-1237/

@Octavious: i've been reading wikipedia, it has a lot of this information, though not as succinctly as you are describing.

Putin's link is actually really quite helpful. I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia in this as every time I go on it I gain an understanding that turns out to be wrong :p

@Octavious

The place to look is The Green Papers. (http://www.thegreenpapers.com/). It's extremely detailed and seems to be quite credible. Larry Sabato's folks at UVA (Putin's link) and Nate Silver and his group (fivethirtyeight.com) both use it.

The downside is that it's a bit disorganized and not always easy to find exactly what you're looking for. But here are the most useful links for what you asked about:

For the Democrats: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/D-PU.phtml
For the Republicans: http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/R-PU.phtml

@Octavious

Definitely check out the 538 blog. They have a primary tracker that shows their predicted targets by state and date for the remaining primaries. They have lots of good information there

Just don't pay attention to their analysis.