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In search to describe anarchy of GOP race, a new favorite: 'Calvinball'

The GOP convention could turn into an event that the precocious 6-year-old of 'Calvin and Hobbes' fame would love. 

Calvinball:听A made-up sport from the beloved comic strip 鈥淐alvin and Hobbes鈥� in which the rules constantly change as the game goes along 鈥� a comparison now applied to the fractious Republican presidential race.

鈥淐alvin and Hobbes,鈥� for those not old enough to remember, was easily the best strip of recent decades and the greatest of all time. It ran from 1985 to 1995 and featured precocious 6-year-old Calvin and his tiger friend Hobbes, who invented Calvinball after Calvin 鈥� never one to follow convention 鈥� got tired of organized sports. It had : You can鈥檛 play it the same way twice. The ever-changing rules made for, in essence, an absence of any rules.

Political polling expert Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com invoked the game in the chaotic and highly uncertain Republican Party race to the now far-more-predictable Democratic contest. 鈥淚f the Republican race is Calvinball, with everyone making up the rules as they go along, the Democratic race is more like 鈥� zzzzzzz 鈥� golf,鈥� Silver wrote.

But it wasn鈥檛 the first time that the sport had come up in a campaign in which pundits continually seek new metaphors for anarchy. Earlier this month, the Huffington Post鈥檚 Jason Linkins the various possibilities for a brokered GOP convention. He cited the notion that if convention delegates are 鈥渦nbound鈥� by a rule change, or after a first ballot in which no candidate wins a majority, the nominating fight could spill over to the convention floor.

鈥淭here's been lots of talk about a potential unbinding of the delegates after the first ballot at the convention, but this is the first time I can recall anyone suggesting that the party's rule-makers might select a full 鈥楥alvinball鈥� option,鈥� in which delegates are unbound from the jump by an abrupt rule change,鈥� Mr. Linkins wrote.

And in last month鈥檚 Washington Post, David Weigel about now-departed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio鈥檚 chances of cutting into his colleague Ted Cruz鈥檚 vote totals in the Texas primary. 鈥淚n the Calvinball rules of the expectations game, that might let Rubio declare victory if he takes any delegates in Texas,鈥� he wrote. (His Post colleague Chris Cillizza last fall compared to Calvinball.)

Calvinball has come up in other contexts across the ideological spectrum. The Wall Street Journal鈥檚 James Taranto to a controversy involving a feminist academic, while Salon鈥檚 Amanda Marcotte over Senate Republicans鈥� refusal to consider a successor to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Chuck McCutcheon writes his "Speaking Politics" blog exclusively for Politics Voices.

Interested in decoding what candidates are saying? Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark鈥檚 latest book, 鈥淒oubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election,鈥澨�has听just been released.

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