No. If David Duke wants to run as a Republican, nobody can say he is not one. If Lyndon LaRouche wants to run as a Democrat, nobody can say he is not one. That’s how it is.
After the last two Presidential cycles there has been public hand-wringing and soul-searching in the GOP about whether they should move back toward the center or double down on teh crazy. Both times, despite pledges to the contrary, the second course has prevailed.
Should coremelt’s scenario come to pass, I predict unprecedented wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, &c, and a renewed promise to rediscover the “soul” of the Republican party. And after the dust settles, the only thing that will prevent them from going even farther into LaLaLand will the fact that they’ve pretty much reached the end of the line and will need to build new tracks.
Not entirely against their will. There’s no meaningful daylight between the Republicans and the Tea Partiers. It’s always been a fiction that the TP is an independent organization. The GOP establishment doesn’t like Trump because he’s saying irresponsible things out loud in public, not because they disagree with him. If Trump could just maintain, the GOP wouldn’t have any real objection to him.
Just like El Rushbo’s Operation Chaos? How ironic.
Yeah, depending on what happens I can see myself switching party affiliation just to give him a vote in my state’s primary.
I was going to say the same thing. Anyone getting on their high horse had better not be from the UK.
I too have been planning on voting for him in the primary, but I have liberal friends who think this is playing with fire.
Ding ding ding! And he doesn’t need to spend money with his level of fame/infamy.
Had that succeeded, we would now be living under President Clinton, not President McCain.
That’s just the difference.
True, but the people who get to be in the running for delegate slots, pledged or otherwise, would probably be (for the most part) old political warhorses with at least some ties to the party establishment. As such, they might well independently conclude that a Trump nomination would be a fiasco inside a disaster inside a catastrophe for the GOP, and vote accordingly.
Of course, Trumplestiltskin would take up the cry of “Corrupt Bargain!” regardless…
Not if he keeps getting “unpaid” publicity by being prominently displayed in every newscast and headlining the social nets. Then you could get at least Ross Perot or even George Wallace numbers.
There’s plenty of historical precedent that suggests this exact scenario WILL NOT happen.
1964 – Conservative Barry Goldwater defeats mainstream Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination, loses the general election in a landslide and ends up a revered elder statesman.
1968 – George Wallace splits the Democratic party and effectively hands Richard Nixon the presidency. The Democrats ostracize the Wallace wing of the party and nominate the liberal George McGovern in 1972. He loses to Nixon in a landslide.
1976 – Insurgent candidate Ronald Reagan challenges incumbent President Gerald Ford for the nomination. Ford wins the nomination by a margin of only 117 delegate votes, but loses the general election. Instead of being blamed for dividing the party, Reagan wins the nomination and presidency in 1980.
1980 – Ted Kennedy challenges Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. Carter ends up with 64% of the delegates, but Kennedy pointedly snubs him at the convention. The Democrats lose the election but Kennedy ends up a revered elder statesman.
Fine your political parties are purely popularity whores with no values at all. But I can’t talk, in Australia we just have the revolving door prime ministership in which parties kicks out their own leaders at the slightest hint of a poll defeat.
Our parties do have values: the values of their most active members. Not sure that is so wrong.
You might think that you’d have to be registered with a party to vote in its primaries, but even that is not true in many states. Everything about our political culture would have to turn upside down to make this happen.
Parties are vaporware. They seem huge and solid but are actually nothing but hot air. In an America who motto usually seems to be “You Can’t Tell Me What to Do” I would guess that a controlled major party is essentially impossible.
Sure, but as an outside observer then my response is, if a political party isn’t a set of shared ideals then what is at all? Just a meaningless label?
In the absence of a cited answer from an actual lawyer:
What’s stopping parties from doing this is the fact parties can’t always legally control who runs in the primaries, and in states with binding primaries, some of the delegates are legally bound to vote for whoever the majority of primary voters have voted for, which works against your plan for European-style political parties in this country. So, pace Exapno Mapcase, there are laws about this kind of thing, and they work against the creation of strong parties.
It’s a great big tent which people support for multiple possible reasons, among them history, culture, party planks, and, sometimes, sheer idiocy. There are ranges of policies which are possible and impossible in each party, and the modern GOP is known for being rather intolerant of people who step outside of a rather small box on some issues, but policy positions can change over time without changing the core membership of the party.
And sometimes the wheels come off entirely and the party has to radically shift which demographics it’s aiming for or else it risks having another Trump-like life form try to win the nomination for 2020.
Based on an article in the Times, they feel this already. Non-crazy Senatorial candidates in reasonably close states expect to get buried if Trump is the nominee.
Today the establishment can’t unite around one candidate, but by convention time there should be a clear second choice, probably Rubio. (Since the Establishment hates Cruz, and he’d probably lose in a landslide also.)
And Trump going third party is a definite possibility.
How many Republican primaries are winner take all? If a lot, the establishment is in trouble.
So, how much has he spent to get a solid lead in the polls? Trump is the master of using the media (a master of evil, Darth) and as a third party candidate he’d be a hell of a story.
Not spending on a ground game might hurt him - we’ll see. But remember, people fast forward through campaign ads, not news stories. I suspect he knows this.
Is there any evidence that Trump is affiliated with the Tea Party, let alone a “leader” of it?
And if that snowballs rolls through the gates of hell un-melted, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.
I mean, I get the strategy, but if a Trump presidency would be as dangerous as many think, do you really want to risk it?