Fox News reports that the rebel delegate movement is growing, although it’s still a long shot. Still, with Clinton badly wounded, how can they pass up this opportunity?
So what happens if they did nominate someone else, and we assume that that someone else is a fairly mainstream Republican of the Romney/Ryan/Bush variety, as opposed to a Ted Cruz?
“Badly wounded” must refer to the fact that she’s leading by 5-12% and not 13-20%, I guess?
If they replace Trump, they lose his supporters and those people who believe in due process… “I probably wasn’t going to vote for Trump anyway, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to vote for a hand-picked candidate that didn’t even run, or worst, ran and lost.”
If they keep Trump they have a shot at winning. Not a good one, but he was selected by the process.
What happens is that about a third of the party base (a large percentage of the people who voted for Trump plus a scattering of people pissed off at having their votes turned into toilet paper by the party’s grand high panjandrums) withhold their votes in November and the party suffers an electoral bloodbath.
They would lose even worse than with Trump – a huge portion of the Trumpers would go 3rd party or stay home, and they’d actually have a legitimate reason to claim the nomination was stolen.
If they are going to lose anyway, wouldn’t it be better to end the election with more self-respect then they entered it with, and a better platform to rebuild the party on?
No, they would totally lose a large portion of their base and come back looking non-democratic as opposed to just non-Democratic. The best bet is to do what you can to minimize the damage and try again in 4 years.
This thread basically comes down to the fact that adher assured us that it was physically impossible for someone with a approval rating of less than 50% to win the presidency, and so neither Trump nor Hillary could possibly win. So since Trump and Hillary have become the nominee’s he has been grasping at every possible straw to find a way to mold the universe to fit his world view.
I’m not convinced Trump voters are the party’s base. Every Trump voter I know is a low information voter that has never been on board with conservatism. Trump changed the base, he didn’t win the base.
They aren’t all of the party base, but they do make up a significant portion of the red neck side of it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have won the nomination. Telling 40% of the voters in the Republican primary that their votes don’t matter is not going to go over well in the future.
Wake up and smell the coffee adaher, either Trump or Clinton is going to be president in 2017. Neither Biden nor Rubio, nor Gary Johnson is going to ride in to save the day.
It’s true that only one of two people are going to be President. Either HIllary Clinton, or Hillary Clinton’s VP, since she is a bit long in the tooth.
Interesting that people here seem to overwhelmingly think that nominating someone else would be worse than just letting Trump be the nominee. That’s a prediction I hope we get to test. I personally think the Republicans will win, or at the very least make it very close, with a different nominee.
A small group of us has decided that your votes were wrong so we’re going to ignore them and advance Paul Ryan as the the Republican nominee for president.
Hugs and kisses,
The RNC
P.S. We value your vote so don’t forget to vote Ryan this November.
“The Republican party was very unfair to me. Okay? They’re haters. I’ve done very well without their support. My relationship with the voters is going to be great. I will be president.”
I think it’s just low information voters. They don’t know the nuances of conservatism enough to be on or off board with it. The Republican paradigm has been that a candidate signs the contract with the conservatives who run the party and then the conservatives whip up ignorant voters with made-up issues.
Trump figured out he didn’t need to win the approval of conservative gatekeepers; he could just appeal to ignorant voters directly.
I’m saying Republicans lose by less, but I should clarify.
Republicans will undoubtedly lose by more in the Presidential race, numerically speaking. A last-minute nominee change will mean a month or more spent trying to consolidate the party and that is time normally spent bashing your opponent.
That’s fine though, because if Trump wins, we all lose more, regardless of party.
But if Republicans stick behind Trump out of mere loyalty, can anyone tell me what the “Republican Party” will even mean? Trump doesn’t subscribe to the party platform, not even in some kind of superficial way. Is the GOP content to be the anti-Democrat home of small minded bigots? Maybe the party would like the slogan “If you hate them, we like you.”
You deny Trump the nomination and he spends every remaining second of his life successfully screwing the Republican party. You lose in a landslide this election and every other election as long as Trump is alive.
This IS the base. Conservatism IS racism, misogynism and xenophobia.