The object is to give those Republicans who won’t vote for Trump or Hillary a reason to come to the voting booth in November. This guy is the establishment conservative candidate. No, he won’t win, but he gives other establishment conservatives someone to promote so the Establishment types don’t all turn off and drop out, dooming the down-ballot races.
It’s a long shot, counting on this guy with negative-name recognition, but no one with any real pretension of political ambitions is apparently willing to step up, so what are you going to do.
[QUOTE=ABC News]
The group says prominent Republicans will back McMullin, who has some well-known GOP operatives working behind the effort, including Republican consultant Rick Wilson and Florida-based pollster and operative Joel Searby. Better for America has been funded in part by John Kingston, a Boston-based conservative donor who bundled for Mitt Romney.
[/QUOTE]
This is all kinds of confusing. From that article:
So BfA can’t officially endorse anyone but they’re selecting a candidate and trying to get on ballots? They just got their candidate, so were they trying to get “person to be named later” on the ballot? And their “about us” pagesays:
So they can’t support a candidate but they can just hand over all this infrastructure?
Seems pretty lame and dodgy. Slow news day I guess.
It’s the #NeverTrump crowd. Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, David Frum. They’ve been around for months. They think that Trump is the cause of all the madness, not a symptom of deep problems in the Republican party as a whole. They think that if they can force Trump out, either at the convention or through some sort of legal shenanigans, then the voters will all snap back into place and get behind whichever pasty white Christian male that they can prop up front.
Yes, it’s irrational. That’s what you get when you rely on faith-based policies.
Read more about it -
Brett Bauer of the New Republic thinks that in addition to trying to salvage the down-ticket races, #NeverTrumpers are desperate to disavow what Trump’s choice says about the GOP.
This article from the Guardian by Sabrina Siddiqui also suggests that the #NeverTrump movement is trying to pretend that conservatives aren’t at fault for Trump’s win.
I agree with Carnal, this is a fool’s errand, but it’s not my time or money and if this guy is willing to waste 3 months of his life so he can suction off 4,000 votes from DJT in Utah and Idaho, well, be my guest.
I am failing to see what any of this has to do with what we were talking about. Yes, of course, the #NeverTrump guys want to disavow Trump and say he doesn’t really represent Republicans. Yes of course they hoped to deny him the nomination - it’s kind of right in their name, but that time is well passed. We were talking about the strategic purpose of this no name #NeverTrumpist running an independent Presidential campaign.
If McMullin were even remotely serious, he would have called his family and friends in Utah, gotten the 1,000 signatures and filed to get on the ballot. If the Prominent Republicans knew what they were doing, they would have had their friends in places like Idaho, Iowa and Tennessee also getting petition signatures, and they would have scrounged up enough money to pay the filing fees in Colorado and Louisiana. Maybe they would have worked with some of the Kasich people to get 5,000 signatures in Ohio. Then McMullin could announce that he had already gotten on the ballot in a number of states and maybe I could take this semi-seriously.
B.I.N.G.O. This is obviously just an inflated-ego driven protest stunt rather than a real money/organizational backed #NeverTrump or get out the Republican voters move.
It sounds like you’re thinking that McMullin had been wanting to run but wasn’t serious enough to get on the ballot sooner but still he was able to get the support of the Never Trumpers because he’s not Trump.
I had assumed that the Never Trump group had been wanting to get someone to run, and been having a hard time finding someone suitable who would be willing to do it. There are other people who would have been suitable candidates who probably were unwilling to do it, since it is a losing campaign, and they are deliberately splitting the Republican party, and maybe how this campaign goes will affect any future campaigns. But then after searching the Never Trump group finally found McMullin, and he’s a good Mormon with no scandals who holds the correct political views, and has no political career to harm so he’s the perfect candidate for the group’s specific goals.
I’m not sure who’s correct. I’d like to see if McMullin gets any endorsements or ads or obvious financial pushes.
As much as I’d like this to be a real movement that siphons rational Republican votes away from Trump, I have to conclude that this is more like an insignificant non-event. Rational Republicans are either going to stay home or vote for Hillary, and a tiny handful of the Libertarian persuasion will vote for Johnson. I don’t know who would vote for this guy if he’s even on the ballot.
That said, I wouldn’t characterize never-Trumpers like Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, or David Frum as “irrational”. I don’t know Rick Wilson but Kristol and Frum are genuinely concerned about their party, and Frum is a downright moderate among US Republicans who loathes Trump about as much as the rest of us.
I think what he’s saying is that if they (him and Better for America) were serious they would have made this announcement with something tangible in hand. 26 deadlines have passed, a good chunk only a week or two ago. 7 more pass this Wednesday. They haven’t done any of the required leg work to be taken seriously. If he just decided to run Sunday night, then that’s too frigging late. If you decide to start running a marathon 2 hours after the starting gun, no one is going to consider you serious about it.
