Water Cooler 3/17/16 OPEN THREAD - Conservative wins OH-8 primary, Missouri's delegates, Favorite westerns

Ouch. That has to hurt: While we were focused Tuesday on the presidential primary, another battle was underway in Ohio’s 8th district for the seat once held by former speaker John Boehner. Boehner was ousted as speaker mainly through efforts of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Politico reports in the primary to replace him, Warren Davidson came out on top. A newbie to politics, Davidson got help from the Club for Growth and was endorsed by Jim Jordon of the House Freedom Caucus. The seat is thought safe GOP. Davidson faces a Democratic challenger in a 6/7/16 special election.

Missouri pencils in its delegate allocation: The Missouri GOP stresses the allocation is tentative, but as of Thursday afternoon the plans are for Donald Trump to get 37 (12 for the statewide win, 5 each for CD 1, 2, 3, 6 & 8) and Ted Cruz to receive 15 (5 each for CD 4, 5, and 7) The numbers remain tentative because military and overseas ballots are still arriving and will continue to be counted through noon Friday. Trump and Cruz are separated by 0.2 percent and a recount can be done if requested. Cruz has seven days to request a recount.

One poll: There’s a Merill poll for Arizona out. Not a whole lot to go on since we can’t look at the whole thing but RCP says it was taken 3/7 – 3/11 of 300 likely voters. Trump leads with 31 %, Cruz has 17, while Kasich and Rubio each got 10. One interesting fact, according to Bizjournal, is that 30 percent of Republican respondents remained undecided.

A different kind of poll: NY post has up some numbers now that Marco Rubio dropped out of the race. Morning Consult interviewed 8,732 registered voters from March 11 to 15, and discovered out of 412 Rubio supporters, 47% support Cruz as their second pick. 27% picked John Kasich while 13 percent of Rubio backers supported Donald Trump.

Montana’s Mess: Montana’s GOP is trying to get out of its open primary system And has filed suit to do just that. The suit was actually filed in 2014, but the wheels of law turn slowly by virtue of motions and appeals. But now there is added urgency reports the Billings Gazette:

“Worried that outsiders will force the election of Donald Trump in Montana’s open June 7 primary, groups within the Montana GOP want out and are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the state from stopping the party’s exit. On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered Montana to respond to the GOP’s argument by Tuesday.”

The emergency appeal got some results it seems. Things are getting complicated in Montana.

Quickhits: There’s been a couple of endorsements up on the front page today. Here are some others. Mike Leavitt, Utah’s former governor and adviser to Mitt Romney. in 2012, has endorsed John Kasich.

Arizona Congressman David Schweikert has endorsed Ted Cruz.

And, NONE of the people mentioned in this article have endorsed Trump.

If you love Westerns, here’s something you may want to keep. Newsmax has out its list of what it believes to be the Top 50 Film and TV Westerns. The top 3, counting down are Dances With Wolves, The Unforgiven, and number one was The Alamo. Check to see where your favorites are and argue them down below.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day. Not going to spend a lot of time explaining green beer. It’s not that complicated. It’s green, and it’s beer. But what about the shamrock? It’s traditional to wear shamrocks or something green today. It’s believed St Patrick used the shamrock “to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish.”

The water cooler’s filled up. The rest is up to you. Chat up something you saw here or drop in something new from the outside. And come back throughout the day as new stuff gets left down below. The ‘cooler is always Open Thread.

* all emphasis mine.