Would we not suppose this to be true of any non-Trump who was brokered against the plurality of primary voters?
I suspect that most Trump voters are not loyal Republican voters. If you lose them, then basically you just have to go into the election with the same voters Republicans had in 2008 and 2012. Which against any good Democrat would mean we’d fall short, but against Clinton or Sanders, that coalition is probably good enough to win. The Rubio and Kasich general election polling looks pretty damn good.
Ryan is I think more level-headed about it at this point.
The candidates running OTOH would be subject to the sunk cost fallacy.
And the delusion that addie has.
Most? Possibly. But not all of Trump’s GOP people are previous non-voters and certainly not previous Obama voters. It would be the same voters as 2008 and 2012 with changing demographics that favor th Democratic side and with further depressed non-college educated and GOP leaner independent turnout
I’m sure those general election polls poll Trump voters just like everyone else. They may not be predictive of the eventual outcome, but they do show that as of right now, Rubio and Kasich hav wide acceptance among voters. It’s going to be very hard for Clinton to overcome the fact that a majority of voters just don’t like her.
And changing demographics don’t mean anything if minority voters don’t turn out and vote as heavily Democratic as they did with Obama on the ballot. What hopeful Democrats often miss is that Obama didn’t just bring out more minority voters, they also voted for Democrats at record rates. It’s not a sure thing by any means that any other Democrat can duplicate that.
True in general, but I sort of figured Trump didn’t have a lot of supporters in the formal party structure, and so just signed up lists of volunteers as delegates. Plus, while there might be pressure on delegates to help the establishment, there’s also going to be a decent amount of pressure to support the candidates who actually got the most votes.
Basically, people seem to be picturing a brokered convention as all the Trump and Cruz supporters all of a sudden turning into middle-of-the-road establishment Republicans after the first ballot. I’m pretty skeptical that’d be the case. My guess is that they’d just cut a deal between them, and if they had more than half the delegates, just chose a Trump Cruz ticket.
I have a very hard time imagining Trump or Cruz stepping aside to let the other one take the top of a ticket. Meanwhile it is less hard to imagine all the other groups getting behind one person.
More likely though is that Trump wins outright and it is all moot.
BTW, Dseid, if all the liberals who say they’d leave the country if Trump won actually left, the Republicans wouldn’t have to worry about demographics ever again.
I could see Cruz doing so. He’d presumably have the second most delegates, so the second spot on the ticket would be vaguely fair. And it sounds like he’s pretty well burned his bridges back at the Senate, so I can’t imagine he’s racing to go back (and its not like he’d be in charge there either, in any case).
Plus I don’t think Trump actually cares that much about politics. Cruz could probably more or less have the run of things, even if he was technically in the VP spot.
If Cruz wants to help stop Trump, he needs to get a majority in Texas. If he does, he gets all the delegates.
Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich all need to win their states. Kasich actually seems the most likely to pull that off, at least in a winner take all way. Cruz will probably win Texas, but Trump will probably still get a decent amount of delegates unless Cruz can win a majority.
The establishment is becoming frustrated with Kasich for staying in. He probably cost Rubio a win in Virginia. I like Kasich, but I think I agree he needs to get out if he’s serious about not making Trump the nominee.
Virginia was proportional – it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. The only way to stop Trump now is to prevent him from getting a majority of delegates, and for that they need to stop him from winning winner-take-all states. Kasich staying in is probably the only hope to stop Trump from taking Ohio, which has a lot of winner-take-all delegates.
Yes, if anything the stop-Trump effort needs to keep all of the remaining alternatives as live as possible. Suck up every possible vote that’s not already committed to Trump.
How are any of them going to turn this theory into an operational campaign slogan? “Vote for Kasich – The Spoiler”
The effectiveness of a Stop Trump effort depends on how seriously The Gods of Things As They Are want it to be effective. They may well be thinking they can work with the guy, the Big Dealmaker, better than they can work with, certainly, Cruz.
Either all three non-Trumps, plus party leaders, work together… or any one of them can throw it to Trump. (Assuming Kasich wins Ohio.)
And I had this idea Kasich was more moderate:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/14/3759893/kasich-clean-energy-climate-change-ohio/
I’m in NE Ohio. Last night I got a New Day For America robocall from a “local small businessman” whose name I didn’t catch, praising (and mispronouncing the name of) Kasich. NDFA is pro-Kasich: New Day for America - FactCheck.org
as I’ve argued before, Kasich’s temperament is moderate, not his positions. Plus the idea that fighting ISIS is more important than the paltry steps possible on climate change at this time is not exactly a controversial stance to take. Republicans would be ecstatic if Democrats made climate change their top campaign issue while Republicans campaigned on national security.
Odd. One might think that the party that ignored the 9/11 warnings, launched an unnecessary war to destabilize the entire Middle East, and didn’t give a fig about capturing Osama bin Laden would want national security way down on its list of campaign issues.