What do you all think he will decide? This decision is being forced by the South Carolina Republican Party and other state Republican Party organizations. Essentially, they are requiring any candidate for the Republican primary pledge support for the eventual nominee if they want to appear on the ballot for the Republican primary. My guess is that he is going to agree to the conditions, but attack the state party organizations at the same time. How do you all see it?
He’ll do whatever gets people talking about him more. Which, in this case, probably means not making any pledge one way or the other, so people can keep talking about whether he’s going to do it or not.
I see him becoming a looser cannon than he already is.
Actually, I’m laughing at the GOP, because they’re damned either way. I really don’t see Trump getting on many state ballots, certainly not all 50. Maybe a few, but yeah, I see him dropping out and running as an independent (if he continues to run at all – it’s 50/50 whether he even stays in for any length of time past the first of the year. When it stops being fun for him, and people start talking about the real candidates, and other issues that really matter (like the economy) like in the spring, and the spotlight’s no longer on him, he’ll take his ball and go home).
He certainly can’t get on the ballots in all 50 states. Some, including battleground Ohio, have sore loser laws that prohibit a candidate from running both in a party’s primary and as an independent. But he only needs to get on a few ballots to be a spoiler. And I think that Trump being able to say that he swung the election would be an even better outcome, from his point of view, than actually winning.
Let’s face facts. Somewhere in the deeper recesses of his mind, Donald Trump knows he’s not going to be elected President, as a Republican or as an independent. So it doesn’t matter if he gets on the ballots in every state. He’s just doing this because he craves attention. And running as an independent will let him stay in the spotlight up to election day.
Fact is, you don’t know that. Everyone he’s around is probably telling him he has a real chance. Is he such an independent thinker as to not be affected by that? I doubt it.
He’ll delay up to September 30, when he has to make the South Carolina decision. If he’s still in the lead in the SC GOP polling, he’ll make the pledge.
As for the third party bid, yea, it could happen. But he’d have to put in way more of his own money than he’d like.
Apparently most of these sore loser laws don’t apply to presidential nominations but I can’t find a definitive list on which ones do or don’t. Many have simultaneous filing deadlines instead of an actual law on the books as well but again I can’t find a compilation of which states do so.
The question is; even if Trump made such a pledge, would be honor it? It’s not as though he has any loyalty to the GOP or has to worry about losing committee seats or reelection funding, and I can’t imagine that the party has any legal means to force him into supporting the nominee or not running as an independent.
Trump will do whatever most appeases his ego and stresses his ability to proclaim that he is very rich and very smart, and I don’t think he’s above playing a “Ha-ha, fooled ya!” on the state committees if he wants to. Hell, he could even spin it as the party establishment trying to shut him down because they know how much the people want to vote for him, or point to Lisa Murkowski as an example of a Republican who successfully won a general election after losing the primary.
And that’s the whole thing right there. In The Donald’s world:
Free publicity = good.
Publicity charged at the going rate = no deal!
I’m guessing that no one was more surprised than perennial pseudo-candidate and perpetual dropout Trump that this time the Tea Party/birther/wingnut faction was so stupidly desperate that his fake demagoguery actually caught fire. If you think of it in terms of this faction all being on meth or heroin, with the attention span of a gnat, you know it’s going to wear off pretty soon.
They keep saying that. And it keeps on not happening. He’s been in the lead for 7 weeks now. Why should that change? He’s made the entire rest of the field look small.
And how long is the election cycle? I seem to recall Michelle Bachmann winning the Iowa straw poll to become the ostensible front-runner at just about this time in the last cycle, when I can only presume she must have been on supervised day leave from a mental hospital.
Well, it is worrisome on the fact that his run is becoming very divisive and not only the Republicans are being affected. But I do trust on what I saw coming from many Republican dopers recently, a good number of Republicans will not stomach seeing him become president.
I think now that he will keep it up until around stage 4-6 of the Trump stages of doom from 538:
It is becoming clear that he is going over the Heightened Scrutiny level (that will not affect his base much) and the polls are showing that he may go over the Iowa and New Hampshire level. I do think that if Trump finally fades after that that then it will be too late or virtually impossible for the anti-Trump to run to the center and at the same time to not alienate the former Trump supporters for the general election.
