I don’t think there are any people like the latter. Apparently they don’t get that the Republican establishment is all in a lather exactly because Trump can win the nomination and right now looks like he is going to.
I agree with both of you that the party rallying around Trump to stop Cruz seems more likely than the reverse. (And more likely than either: they’ll continue to stay on the sideline, wringing their hands. :)) It’s just that I don’t see any other likely path by which Trump loses. (Other than the ‘Trump self-destructs’ path that continues to not happen.)
My WAG is that Trump’s (so far) successful domination of the Republican nominating process seems so utterly improbable (has the starship Heart of Gold been in this sector recently? ;)) to people that they have to believe anything this totally improbable will at some point wink out of existence, and things will return to some approximation of normalcy. (“We are now cruising at a level of 2 to the power of 25,000 to 1 against and falling.”)
Totally agree on both counts.
The one thing I’d add is that it’s later than everyone thinks. When we wake up on the morning of March 16, (a) over half the delegates will have already been determined, and (b) the winner-take-all primaries in FL and OH that are the last, best chance for all three of the remaining Establishment Lane candidates to pull off a big win and redefine the race will have just happened the day before.
Trump’s been leading in the polls for 7 months. March 16 is 33 days away.
Trump is literally worse than Hitler and Satan combined. All the evils he has done in the world, murdering billions of people and eating billions of babies is just the worst.
Trump: Fascist Narcissist with extremely thin skin. Not worthy of public office.
Rubio: Pretty clearly has shown that he cannot handle stress well. I don’t think the Presidency, which ages it’s victims horribly, is something he can do.
Cruz: His own party hates him and he doesn’t play nice with anyone. Not someone who should ever be President even if you completely support everything he says.
Carson: Just NOPE. Not equipped to be the leader of the free world.
Kasich: “Moderate” (ha!) but still has too many loony ideas. Still probably a better president than any of the above, but won’t get it because he’s not looney ENOUGH for the teahadists.
Trump? All I can think is that there is still that price on his head from the Mexican drug lords. If he starts pushing the rabid anti-hispanic thing again, we’ll have to see what happens.
The “Satira Tribune” is a fake news site, yes? It’s a funny article, but anyone who sees your post above and doesn’t click on the link might think it’s true.
His price tag is just higher - a lot higher. And the incremental value of $100 million to him is small. He’d rather have the power than more money.
If they are it is because they are in denial. But a month or so back plenty of people on both the left and the right were saying that when the voters actually got near to voting time and looked at the information they’d turn away from Trump to someone reasonable, usually Rubio. It didn’t happen that way. In fact Trump did a lot better in Iowa than he should have, considering how many evangelicals they have there and how anyone with eyes can see that Trump is nowhere close to being religious.
Where we are now is the hope for something miraculous that would give the nomination to someone else not Cruz. Rubio triumphing in NH and being the only mainstream candidate left. The Rubio-bot screwed that up.
It’s interesting that no one in this thread has found a good strategy for the establishment to use. That says a lot.
Assassination? It worked with RFK.
And Bush?
And Bullworth.
The GOP has been a coalition of populist political groups claiming to have been fighting the establishment themselves for a long time now. In order to work this without insulting their base they have some options based on the circumstances ahead.
In order to promote Bush, Kasich, or Rubio they need to execute a deal that makes one of them the candidate and the other two his allies. This could be very likely if one of them takes a noticeable lead over the other two, or if either Cruz or Trump drops out and plays king maker with his support. If either Trump or Cruz begins to falter they can make a deal with them as well to cut the problem down to just one anti-establishment candidate.
At that point they can begin non-candidate specific party based marketing ostensibly aimed at the upcoming general election, but carefully oriented toward the establishment message. If Trump and Cruz are both left in the race the timing for that is critical to pick up delegates where either of them is weak and let the people speak where they are strong. They need deniability so that the contest doesn’t look more rigged than it already it is.
If they can use techniques like that to reduce this to a two man competition the party influence can be more blatant. And if necessary they can put a dirty tricks hit on the remaining problem child to put their weak minded candidate or Kasich through.
I don’t suppose it’s occurred to the GOP establishment or any of the other candidates to ask Trump for just one detailed, specific policy proposal? That would put a quick end to the main event in ring 2 of the tent.
- Condition your followers to distrust ‘the media’ via your propaganda arm, Fox News.
- Condition your followers to distrust ‘the establishment’ via your militant wing, The Tea Party.
- Condition your followers to eschew all human decency via AM-radio talking heads who conflate “PC” with “not acting like a raging dick”.
- Watch in horror as your bleating followers, radicalized beyond all control, flock to the first loudmouthed bully who manages to condense your political philosophy into a series of rude, sexist, content-free, willfully uninformed bumper sticker slogans, resisting all efforts of Fox and Establishment Republicans to pull his plug.
- As a result of the loudmouth’s candidacy, spend a generation in the political wilderness.
Schadenfreude isn’t my favorite freude, but in this case it’ll do nicely.
Exactly. There’s still millions of Palin lovers. Maybe not on this board… 
The same way people say, “Trump’s bankruptcies don’t matter.” I remember when all the layoffs happened in Atlantic City. He’ll be a great job creator. :rolleyes:
Agree philosophically, but don’t make the mistake of thinking the braying horde doesn’t have very real consequences for the governance the rest of us live under.
And heaven help us all if Trump wins the general election. His coattail Congressmen would be amazing. Even if we don’t start seeing them until 2018.
Winners breed followers.
Absolutely not. Those folks are dragging down the curve!
The good strategies all involved, as you say, “Rubio triumphing in NH and being the only mainstream candidate left.”
Now they’re fucked.
The problem for now is, each one of them has convincing reasons (in their own minds, at least) for why they should be the one to stay in the running.
Yeah, but that’ll take time. Time is something they don’t have much of. And all three of them are motivated to stay in until the WTA primaries in their respective home states on March 15.
Besides, what coin can one offer any of these guys in exchange for dropping out before they’re ready to call it quits, that would be worth something to them?
For this to happen, one of the Establishment lane candidates really has to get into second place first, and stay there long enough to convince Trump/Cruz, whichever is trailing, to drop out. But the underlying problem is that of getting one of the Establishment candidates in second place to begin with.
It has.
It hasn’t.
Fine, then ask and don’t stop until you get an answer that comports with the adult, objective reality most of us experience.
How much patience and persistence do you have?
The debate format is essentially dueling sound bites. With no way for one candidate to really force another to answer. So “forcing Trump to provide a detailed policy for X” is simply not gonna happen.
The larger point is the one I made here in the thread about about a Trump vs Hillary debate.
The scoring system used by the Trump fans is not the scoring system used by the non-Trump fans. Whatever he says will be declared a victory by the folks that matter to him. Having, e.g., CNN roundly condemn his non-answers as bombastic and childish will only further inflame his supporters. Of which there are now enough to have cultural gravity all their own. They’re attracting new adherents as much by the band-wagon effect as by agreement with the “principles” of the Trump message.
Populism, once it gets the bit in its teeth, is like wildfire: vastly easier to prevent than to control. Ask PASOK & the other establishment parties in Greece these days. Or in several other European countries.
Regardless of who gets elected in 2016 I predict that if we have another significant recession the 2020 election will feature a lot more demagogues and a lot less “establishment lane.” Given the lower levels of social capital in this country, the deeply entrenched us/them attitudes, and the severe geographic stratification, it could get a lot less pleasant than merely empowering the US equivalent of Syriza. See Syriza - Wikipedia for those who don’t follow EU & Greek politics.