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By Amber Phillips

No matter how many times he says he's not running, the idea of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) swooping in to save Republicans from Donald Trump at the GOP convention in July just won't die. That's because members of the Republican establishment are desperate for an alternative to Donald Trump — and, to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz. They have settled on Ryan, for reasons we'll outline below.

It's an unlikely scenario, but what the heck, people are talking about it. So let's go there and look at the reasons why Ryan might — and, more likely, might not — somehow become the GOP's 2016 nominee for president. (More arguments here.)

Yes: Ryan can unify the party

( Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)

To many Republicans, Ryan is everything Trump isn't: He's a policy wonk, he's got a long history of supporting conservative policies, he rarely misspeaks, and he preachers inclusiveness instead of divisiveness. Republicans keen on Ryan's anti-Trump persona might be able to convince Ryan it's a now-or-never moment to jump in to unify the party.

A reluctant Ryan heard a similar argument from Republicans in the fall when they were convincing him to take the speakership — and what do you know, it worked.

No: He'd be a sacrificial lamb

(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

Now that he's speaker, Ryan is a bona-fide member of the establishment, and this has proven to be a terrible year for anyone in the establishment. Once-fawning conservative blogs have turned on him since he got the job, and Ryan was even booed at a Trump rally in the speaker's hometown of Janesville, Wis., last week.

Plus, what if Trump makes good on a threat to run as a third-party candidate? Such a situation would all but guarantee the Republican vote is split, and Hillary Clinton is our next president. Ryan may well want to be president some day, but he's smart enough to know this isn't the year for him to run.

How does a contested convention even work?

It's a complicated, convoluted, somewhat bureaucratic process, but it could be pretty important to who wins the Republican nomination. As such, we'll visit this question at least a few more times in The 5-Minute Fix, especially if a contested convention is increasingly likely, as it is right now. This first installment is on the basics:

The set-up: Let's say we get to the Cleveland convention in July and none of the three candidates left in the race have earned a majority of delegates — 1,237, to be exact. We have a contested (also called a brokered) convention on our hands.

The next step: All hell breaks loose. After the first round of voting where no one wins, there will be another round of voting, at which point some of the pledged delegates could be legally released from voting for the candidate they came to cast a ballot for (different states have different rules on that). There's a ton of lobbying, deal-cutting and likely political intrigue as campaigns try to rally a majority of delegates around them — or a dark horse. (See one Ryan, Paul above).

The next, next step: Repeat above until someone gets a majority of the delegates. In a majority of past contested conventions, the winner has NOT been the guy who walked in with the most delegates. Historical precedent in such a situation is bad news for Trump, who's leading the delegate count right now. But it's been a long time since we've had a contested convention.

Democrats just dodged an (electoral map) bullet

The Supreme Court and pretty flowers. (AFP/Getty Images)

Have you ever stopped to think about how our politicians' districts get drawn? Gerrymandering to make a district lean one way or the other politically is a major factor, yes. But even before that — how do you count the number of people in, say, a congressional district? Should it be by all the people living there? By only eligible voters (U.S citizens 18 and older, for example?)

Most states have been doing it based on population for years now. But this year, the Supreme Court heard a case that could have upended the entire process. A conservative voting rights group sued the state of Texas saying only the citizen, voting-age population should be used to draw districts.

Sounds boring, but it has serious political implications. There tends to be more eligible voters in areas that lean Republican — say whiter, rural areas or suburbs — than Democratic urban cores. So such a recounting of what "one person, one vote" means would have upended many of our country's congressional and state electoral districts in Republicans' favor.

The Supreme Court basically decided Monday to keep the status quo, meaning there will be no mass redrawing of electoral battle lines to favor Republicans. Democratic politicians across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

We at The Fix, however, won't breathe a sigh of relief until this campaign is over! So keep up-to-date on the latest twists and turns with us, here and below. We'll see you late, late Tuesday with Fix Boss Chris Cillizza's pick of winners and losers from the Wisconsin Republican and Democratic primaries.

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