Trump’s base are the same people the GOP elite have been playing for useful idiots ever since 1972. Perhaps it never occurred to them than an outsider could also find a use for them.
You know, it occurs to me that there is a very clear though difficult way people like Trump (not Trump himself, its too late) could be stopped, but that will come at the expense of pissing off a good deal of their base. The RNC could just rejigger the order of the primaries. Put more establishment-friendly, “moderate” states first so that the narrative doesn’t have to start in some tiny backwater religious state, or a state where “moderate” is a dirty word.
How different will the primaries look like if you front load the primaries with California, New York, Florida, Washington, Minnesota, DC, New Jersey, etc.? The RNC controls its own order doesn’t it? If enough establishment Republicans who control the RNC want this, can’t they do it by fiat? Or does there need to be cooperation by the states? Didn’t both the GOP and Dems strip some states of their delegates in 2012? I could have sworn I remember something happening to Ron Paul’s delegates
Those are blue states, but that’s different than saying the GOP primary voters there are “moderate”. The GOP rank-and-file in some of them is, in some cases, more extreme than in red states.
To use the current election as an example, Trump’s best states (by polling) are NJ, Mass and NV. So pushing those states to the front wouldn’t really help.
Also, I thought that New Hampshire had “we shall have the first primary” written into their state constitution. Iowa got away with going before them on the “caucus” technicality. So I don’t see the primary order changing any time soon.
One imagines that the parties could simply disregard those statutes, reschedule their primaries and declare IA and NH’s delegates invalid if they didn’t fall into line.
Or say that he really is a liberal, which George Will said last Sunday. Specifically, Trump was to the left of Hillary.
That was a nice article in the Times about how the Republicans tried to put on a unified effort against Trump - and failed miserably. They were about as effective as the Jedi Council was against Palpatine.
You’re right, there are plenty of nutjobs in blue and purple states too. Darrel Issa, that fucking slimeball, comes from CA. But as I understand it, having to appeal to a larger base and a more varied one forces moderation moreso than in a smaller, more homogenous state. We know Iowa and much of the Southern, smaller states is religious evangelical country. New Hampshire favors moderates and oddballs, and South Carolina is an establishment stronghold. I get that. But I think the picture will look different if larger states go first, that’s all.
As for Trump’s support, I’m not really sure I can explain it. The whole primary is a weird one. It could be that he’s an East Coast Wall Street guy so that’s why he’s got support in NY. But it could also mean that his opponents are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and that he’s seriously the best of the worst. As a Californian, I just think that we should have a shot at electing the nominee for a party. Right now, we don’t matter, at all. The races are decided months before we vote. But I’ll bet that for 2020 or 2014, if the above states are front loaded, we’d be looking at a different slate of candidates than the ones we’ve had in the last few cycles.
:dubious: Please don’t ever gloat over anything having to do with Star Wars. Damn the nerds, this Board is a Star Trek house and it always will be! :mad:
By the way, Voyager, I have soooo been unabashedly stealing your line in real life conversations.