Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): Ryan has a path to the presidency now that Donald Trump has been defeated in Wisconsin. Credit: Win McNamee

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Donald Trump's loss in Wisconsin's primary on Tuesday means he almost certainly won't be able to win the Republican nomination outright. Trump now needs to win more than 56% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination, but to date, he's only won a total of 46%. According to The Wall Street Journal, his Wisconsin loss "all but tank(s) his ability to reach the 1,237 (delegate) mark for the nomination."

Unless Trump unexpectedly surges in the next few weeks, he'll likely be facing a contested Republican convention in Cleveland in July. And my money is on Wisconsin native Paul Ryan walking away from the convention with the nomination.

As John Kasich likes to point out, a contested convention has happened 10 times in the past, and in only three of those has the front-runner entering the convention left as the nominee. What Kasich doesn't like to talk about, however, is that after the first few rounds of voting, the delegates are free to vote for whomever they want. Ryan's failure to participate in the primary won't matter.

Of course, Ryan has said he doesn't want to run for president. At least not right now. But his modus operandi has been to say he doesn't want something and then end up with it anyway. Remember when Ryan swore he didn't want to be Mitt Romney's running mate or the speaker of the House?

Republicans will beg him to run at the convention, and I think he will agree. Why? Because Ryan is the only Republican with a legitimate shot at beating Hillary Clinton head to head or in a three-way race in November if Trump runs as an independent. And who wouldn't want the opportunity to run for president when you get to skip the primary morass and only have to dedicate four months of your life to campaigning? Such an opportunity isn't likely to come again.

The GOP won't pick Trump at the convention if they don't have to — not just because they detest him, but because he can't win. If it's only Clinton vs. Trump in the general election, the polls show Clinton winning by 10 percentage points. Ted Cruz is polling somewhat better against Clinton, but still lags her by about five percentage points. Only the more moderate John Kasich is currently leading Clinton mano a mano in the polls, which would bode well for an equally moderate, and more likable, Ryan, should he get picked for the nomination.

So why not go with Kasich over Ryan at the convention? Because I'm not convinced Kasich can win if Trump runs as an independent, but Ryan can.

You see, most people don't realize it, but there's a rarely used provision in the U.S. Constitution that requires a candidate to get a majority of the Electoral College votes in the general election to win the presidency. Since the advent of the two-party system, this provision hasn't come into play. With three viable candidates that could more evenly split the vote, however, it could. And if a candidate doesn't get an electoral college majority, the Constitution says the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will get to decide who's our next president. The vote count won't matter.

This has happened before, but not since the election of 1824. Back then, there were only 261 electoral votes available, meaning 131 were needed for a majority. Four major candidates were on the ballot: Andrew Jackson of Tennessee got 99 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts landed 84, Secretary of State William H. Crawford received 41 and Henry Clay from Kentucky won 34. Without the requisite 131, the race was then turned over to the House of Representatives. Even though Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and had more electoral votes, the House gave the presidency to John Quincy Adams.

The idea of this happening this November for the first time in almost 200 years isn't as far-fetched as you might think. In fact, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg decided not to run as an independent for this exact reason: he thought a three-way race between him, Clinton and a Republican nominee would be impossible for him or Clinton to win. He said so in an op-ed he published in early March in Bloomberg View when he formally announced he wasn't running. Neither could get the 270 Electoral College vote majority necessary to win the general election, he thought, because they would split the Democratic and independent vote, thereby handing the race to the Republican nominee or the Republican-controlled House.

If Trump refuses to abide by the GOP convention's decision and runs as an independent, he will split the Republican vote. His supporters are ardent, and it won't take much for an independent Trump campaign to siphon off enough votes to keep the Republican nominee, whomever it is, from getting the requisite 270 needed to win the general election. The hard truth that the GOP needs to start facing is this: the Republican nominee's only chance at ending up in the White House if Trump runs as an independent is to also keep Clinton from getting a majority of the electoral votes, thereby punting the decision to the House. Only a moderate-Republican has any legitimate chance of doing this.

That means it has to be Kasich or Ryan, and Ryan is the better option of the two. He's moderate, young, attractive and well-liked. Ryan against Trump and Clinton could create an electoral mess, leaving Clinton short of the electoral majority she needs.

If that occurs, the House almost certainly would pick Ryan as our next president. And there's nothing Trump or Clinton could do about it.

Brian H. Potts is a partner in the Madison office of the international law firm Foley & Lardner LLP.