The GOP's Third Party Option

[chero23]

Likewise, that Mr. Trump cares about veterans and cares about Americans that are victimized by those with no right to be in our country, I find to be a moral position.

The event that he had in Iowa on the same day as the debate. Which he said would go to veterans has not been distributed. The money went to his personal foundation.
thefederalist.com/2016/01/28/trumps-new-pro-veterans-website-directs-all-donations-to-trumps-personal-foundation/

thefederalist.com/2016/01/28/trumps-new-pro-veterans-website-directs-all-donations-to-trumps-personal-foundation/

 

[petra22]

I was talking to someone earlier at work who brought up something I had never thought of, Im kinda wondering about it now…

Maybe Hillarys people wanted her in office so bad, they got together with Trump long ago and got him to agree to enter the race, all done as a ruse to ensure Hillary wins the office.

But since Trump has been #1 since almost day one, no one knows what to do at this point, plan backfired??

No, that’s the conversation they had with Bernie…!

 

[SuperLuigi]

Well, Sanders has already said he will not run 3rd party - that if he loses, he will support Hillary and ask that his supporters do the same. So, I wasn’t thinking about that scenario. While folks sometimes change their mind, he strikes me as a man of his word.

It seems likely that Trump will be the Republican nominee and that, perhaps, a brigade of hard grass-roots Conservatives might put up a more normal Republican on an Independent or Libertarian ticket. In that case, I agree that it looks great for the Democrats, though such a scenario may help to preserve some of the Republican seats on the down ballot.

No scenario looks great for the Democrats. Even if they win, they’ll have to go to their very unpopular fall-back position of fiscal (and eventually social) conservatism that is their secret safety net or American will no longer be a First World nation.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Are you worried that, if Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination, his supporters will make sure that Clinton wins the general?

Not if the nominee is Cruz. For all the talk of these new voters, there don’t seem to be that many of them in polling.

Romney and Ryan both drew big crowds in 2012 and it got us nothing.

The GOP’s top priority in winning should be in turning out the base. I doubt the current frontrunner does that, and certainly not as effectively as Cruz.

 

[TMC]

Not if the nominee is Cruz. For all the talk of these new voters, there don’t seem to be that many of them in polling.

Romney and Ryan both drew big crowds in 2012 and it got us nothing.

The GOP’s top priority in winning should be in turning out the base. I doubt the current frontrunner does that, and certainly not as effectively as Cruz.

If Cruz is the nominee Clinton will win in a landslide. That might be the best thing for the GOP as it will finally silence the nonsense that the GOP could win if they just got even more radically conservative.

 

[SuperLuigi]

No. What’s ludicrous is people claiming to be pro-life when they’re cool with torture and the death penalty.

My statement never mentioned mistreatment of children, so I uhhh…don’t know where you’re going with that.

The Church has made it very clear that “torture” and the death penalty are not the same as abortion.

Besides, I’m sure many pro-life folks oppose all of those.

So it’s really just a left-wing talking point to grow the government so it can come riding on a white horse to save the day.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

If Cruz is the nominee Clinton will win in a landslide. That might be the best thing for the GOP as it will finally silence the nonsense that the GOP could win if they just got even more radically conservative.

I certainly agree with that.

 

[SuperLuigi]

If Cruz is the nominee Clinton will win in a landslide. That might be the best thing for the GOP as it will finally silence the nonsense that the GOP could win if they just got even more radically conservative.

That’s what they said about Reagan. All he did in 1984 was almost win Wayne County Michigan and Cook County Illinois as well as over 500 electoral votes and a quarter of the democratic vote.

The fact is Cruz polls more or less evenly with the democratic frontrunner in the general and in every purple state.

So the idea that he’d lose in a landslide is absurd to say the least.

The GOP won independents with Romney Ryan (in fact, they won independents by 10 points in that all-important state of Ohio and lost it).

And what have democrats done to show independents they should vote for them? They’ve made their point clear in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

The GOP needs the base, period.

 

[TMC]

That’s what they said about Reagan. All he did in 1984 was almost win Wayne County Michigan and Cook County Illinois as well as over 500 electoral votes and a quarter of the democratic vote.

The fact is Cruz polls more or less evenly with the democratic frontrunner in the general and in every purple state.

So the idea that he’d lose in a landslide is absurd to say the least.

The GOP won independents with Romney Ryan (in fact, they won independents by 10 points in that all-important state of Ohio and lost it).

And what have democrats done to show independents they should vote for them? They’ve made their point clear in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

The GOP needs the base, period.

OK, let’s just check in November and see how that goes. The GOP is in complete disarray at the national level and moving even further out of the mainstream is not the solution.

 

[SuperLuigi]

OK, let’s just check in November and see how that goes. The GOP is in complete disarray at the national level and moving even further out of the mainstream is not the solution.

How can I be more clear:

The GOP has run “mainstream” candidates with Dole, McCain, Romney. They all lost.

In 2012 Mitt Romney lost the election but won independents, that would be those mainstream voters" by purely secular amoral standards. He also won republicans, obviously, but reports were that 3-5 million of them stayed home.

Ted Cruz’s numbers are good at this point, especially in swing states and that trend has been consistent. I also expect Cruz’s numbers would improve were he the nominee and because it seems like some of the polls I read under-sample republicans.

Ted Cruz is the best chance for the republicans because he will turn out the base and independents by their usual standards don’t have a good enough reason to vote 50% or more Democratic.

 

[TMC]

How can I be more clear:

The GOP has run “mainstream” candidates with Dole, McCain, Romney. They all lost.

In 2012 Mitt Romney lost the election but won independents, that would be those mainstream voters" by purely secular amoral standards. He also won republicans, obviously, but reports were that 3-5 million of them stayed home.

Ted Cruz’s numbers are good at this point, especially in swing states and that trend has been consistent. I also expect Cruz’s numbers would improve were he the nominee and because it seems like some of the polls I read under-sample republicans.

Ted Cruz is the best chance for the republicans because he will turn out the base and independents by their usual standards don’t have a good enough reason to vote 50% or more Democratic.

Right. So there are several possible reasons that candidates like Romney lost. One is that he was pushed too far right to attract a majority of voters. Another is that he was not sufficiently extreme to be attractive to the far right. Obviously there are other reasons, but you are saying that the reason is that he was not sufficiently outside the political mainstream to attract the far right voters. I disagree. I think that if the GOP nominates Cruz, they will learn that nominating someone on the right fringe is not a good national political strategy.

 

[Peter_J]

How can I be more clear:

The GOP has run “mainstream” candidates with Dole, McCain, Romney. They all lost.

In 2012 Mitt Romney lost the election but won independents, that would be those mainstream voters" by purely secular amoral standards. He also won republicans, obviously, but reports were that 3-5 million of them stayed home.

Ted Cruz’s numbers are good at this point, especially in swing states and that trend has been consistent. I also expect Cruz’s numbers would improve were he the nominee and because it seems like some of the polls I read under-sample republicans.

Ted Cruz is the best chance for the republicans because he will turn out the base and independents by their usual standards don’t have a good enough reason to vote 50% or more Democratic.

I hope so. But I think any GOP candidate’s chances of winning in Nov are hurt, at least to some extent, by the ongoing three-way split (Moderate Wing, Tea Party, and Trump Party) within the GOP.

 

[Peter_J]

Right. So there are several possible reasons that candidates like Romney lost.

You don’t think it’s that he choked, he choked, he choked, he choked?

 

[TMC]

You don’t think it’s that he choked, he choked, he choked, he choked?

I said there were other reasons besides the two I listed. I agree that he choked. But I think that part of the reason he choked is that the party was insisting that he try to run as something he was not. They tried to force him into a more conservative mold. He came across as inauthentic and uncaring because he was pretending to be something he was not and he was not focused on things he actually cared about.

Obviously his political choices are on him. And I am not saying that he would have definitely won if he had run as the same guy that governed Massachusetts. But I do think that a fiscally conservative moderate would have had a shot against Obama. I think a conservative like Kasich would do well against Clinton. I think that a hard right candidate gives the GOP no shot.

 

[Peter_J]

I ask because I’ve heard “He choked, he choked” so many times on CNN and Foxnews, I wondered if that proved it was true.

 

[Darryl1958]

I ask because I’ve heard “He choked, he choked” so many times on CNN and Foxnews, I wondered if that proved it was true.

I don’t think that the reasons he lost had as much to do with Romney choking as they did with people chosing Obama.

Identity politics work. Cleave off enough special interest groups from the population at large in a heterogeneous society, promise all sorts of entitlements for those groups, raise the fears that society at large is out to get those in your group, and people in those groups will turn out in droves to vote for you.

Romney proved to be a thoroughly decent and honest candidate. He was projected as a murderer to be feared, but nobody honestly believed that. Those were just the talking points. It somehow makes liberals feel less greedy to pretend that they are voting against evil, rather than for entitlements for themselves.

 

[GEddie]

Right. So there are several possible reasons that candidates like Romney lost. One is that he was pushed too far right to attract a majority of voters. Another is that he was not sufficiently extreme to be attractive to the far right. Obviously there are other reasons, but you are saying that the reason is that he was not sufficiently outside the political mainstream to attract the far right voters. I disagree. I think that if the GOP nominates Cruz, they will learn that nominating someone on the right fringe is not a good national political strategy.

They tried men near the center twice in succession and it didn’t work.

 

[Monkey1976]

They tried men near the center twice in succession and it didn’t work.

Which is exactly why those who lean left keep telling the Republicans to try it again.

 

[TMC]

They tried men near the center twice in succession and it didn’t work.

Well, they are now looking at two men way outside of the center. Let’s see how that goes for them. I don’t think it will go any better.

 

[Peter_J]

Identity politics work.

True. But don’t forget that Romney has something even stronger …

Probably quite a lot. Mormonism has some peculiar attributes about it, one of them being that thing about how people will become de facto “gods” in the hereafter. It has a certain, but very odd, Calvinistic flavor to it. If one becomes important on earth, has lots of progeny, gives a lot to the Mormon church, one might rule a whole galaxy as its god hereafter. If, however, one is just an ordinary Mormon who gives his service and 10% of a smallish income to the church, he might end up with just one modest planet to rule someday.

And so, it has an element of “success=election” aspect to it. Romney has probably given 10% of everything he ever made to the Mormon church, and that would be a lot. If so, he probably has a high station in it, officially or unofficially, and his word probably means a lot more than we would think. It would be incorrect to compare Mormonism with Shinto, but there is one thing they share to a degree. The higher a Mormon is in the church, the more godlike become his pronouncements. So, for example, the pronouncements of the President of the church become doctrine, and following those precepts is spiritually mandatory in belief and in action.

So, while Romney is not the President of the church, if he’s one of the really high-up guys, his word isn’t law, but it has some aspects of spiritual mandate to it.