Per FiveThirtyEight, Trumps threat to run as third party and suck votes from the GOP is not an idle one.
Trump can’t be president, but he’s…actually popular in the polls. He can suck enough votes away to shift the odds to 99% in favor of Hillary Clinton. The GOP isn’t going to nominate him, or if they do, they will lose the election, but if they refuse to nominate him and he carries out his threat…
What can they do to stop him? It’s not like they can pay him off…
Nothing. If he runs as a third party candidate, it isn’t because he wants some concession. It’s because his ego is uncontrollable.
I’m hoping that they end up offering a somewhat outside of the mainstream candidate as the nominee. I’m thinking Ted Cruz. I could easily see Trump’s supporters going to Ted Cruz. Of course Cruz has just as little a chance to beat Clinton as a Trump does, which is why I’m hoping for this kind of an outcome. The theory I heard today about why Trump is pulling in 20 to 25 percent is that these supporters are tired of loosing with an establishment candidate. They feel that if we’re going to loose, lets loose with a Trump or Cruz instead of loosing with Bush the way they lost with McCain and Romney.
Thats where I think this is going. Thats why Cruz isn’t attacking the Donald; he knows that Trump’s voters are not going to “fall in line” for Jeb or Walker, but for him, if they fall anywhere.
The vice presidency. If he really is serious about a third-party run, it keeps those votes within the party, and it gives them an attack dog they can cut loose if-and-when he becomes a liability.
Whether Trump would take it seems doubtful. He strikes me as the sort who has to be the boss in everything he does. I could see him running an independent campaign, finishing third, then bragging about his victory to every microphone within shouting distance.
I don’t know. Trump is making himself pretty toxic to a lot of voters. Trump as a Republican VP candidate might do more for the Democrats than Trump as an independent.
I doubt Trump would agree to be VP anyway and I agree that he would be toxic in that position too.
Managing Trump is going to be a huge challenge for the GOP. As a billionaire outsider, he is in a fundamentally different category from the 2012 clowns who they successfully beat down. They tried a beat down in the Fox debate and it hasn’t worked. I think their best strategy is to attack him relentlessly from the right and hope it wears down his support. Focus on all his deviations from conservative orthodoxy and his past support for Democrats. Don’t bother attacking him from the left: on women, Hispanics etc. because that stuff probably helps him with his base.
There’s the alternative; sore loser laws. They already exist in some states. Most states achieve a similar effect by have the same filing deadline for partisan and independent candidates. Go past that deadline declared for a party, to actually be on the ballot for a primary, and you can’t change your mind afterwards and be on the general election ballot. A few also require registering as a write in candidate for those votes to count.
The Ohio Secretary of State has already said that Trump by registering federally and voluntarily participating in a Republican debate in Ohio, is a Republican presidential candidate for this cycle. Ohio is one that requires registration for write in votes to count. Trump has already closed the door on getting any votes in Ohio unless he successfully litigates.
Half of electoral votes are awarded by March 8th in the primaries. Most of that’s on the 1st of March. By the time he clearly recognizes he’s losing based on actual primary votes, the registration deadline states takes out a huge chunk of his possible support. His ego works against him, His driving away, and not listening to political professionals, reduces the odds of making a smart call with regards to dropping in time to mount an effective independent campaign.
Why make a deal when you can let his giant ego screw his chances of mounting an effective independent campaign?
The premise of this thread is that Trump will not be the Republican nominee, but that by running a third-party campaign Trump would split the Republican vote and give Hillary (or whoever the Democratic nominee is) the win. If you think that Trump is toxic, then there’s not much of a debate. I don’t see how it could be both, that he has enough support to get on to the GOP ticket, but would cost them votes once he is.
I think Trump has no plans for an endgame yet. He just realised that this move, threatening to run as an independent, got him the most power and attention for now. So he did it.
While I doubt highly that he will be the nominee, I don’t see how this is having it both ways. The voters in the primary are not the same as the voters in the general. If the pool of voters who vote in the primaries are more vociferously Trump supporters than the pool of voters in the general election, then there is a scenario where he wins the primary, but would get fewer votes than another GOP candidate in the general.
The problem is you need to bring together a lot of different groups of voters in order to win a presidential election. Trump is toxic to some voters but he’s catnip to others. The Republicans have to figure out a way to pull in the Trump supporters while not pushing away the Trump opponents. If they lose either group the Democrats get in with the majority.
Trump will extract political favors from the GOP and/or the Democrats when he decides to or not to run 3rd party. It’s pretty simple, it’s why this is a no lose situation for him. If he goes all the way with the Repubs, 3rd party, or drops out, he feeds his ego, and stuffs his pocket with receipts. I’m sure he thinks he would be a great president, I’m sure he won’t be, but unlike losers like McCain and Romney he will get something out of this one way or the other.
Again, the premise of the thread is that Trump does not earn the GOP nomination. Apart from that, the primaries don’t enter into it.
After the nominee is chosen, Trump may still have significant support. If he does, the party leadership comes to him and says “please don’t run an independent campaign and split the vote, we’ll give you something you want”. If he’s toxic, the leadership tells him to piss up a rope. But it’s got to be one or the other; either Trump brings votes to the table or he doesn’t.
The thing you are missing is that there two sets of voters that are at play.
Conservative voters who love Trump and would vote for Trump if he ran as an independent but otherwise would vote for the Republican ticket.
Conservative leaning voters who hate Trump and would vote for the Republican ticket unless that ticket is in any way associated with Trump.
It is likely the case that in order to have a chance of winning Republicans need both sets of these voters. If that is the case, then bribing Trump with a vice presidency slot wouldn’t work. While it would win the first set of voters it would lose the second set.
Your argument confuses me. Trump drops out and threatens to go 3rd party. Polling shows he would take some of his voters with him. The nominee says “Huh, maybe we could add him back on as VP so that those voters don’t leave.” But in keeping those voters, they lose other potentially swayable voters instead.
Does this sound wildly implausible to you? It doesn’t to me. (Well, the stats don’t. Picking him as VP and having him agree does.)
They offer him chairmanship of the RNC, concessions on laws in states the GOP controls, invitations to the GOP convention with a prime time speaking slot.
I’m sure he’ll turn down the chairmanship, its really a step down for him. He’s not interested in setting internal policy and cajoling members to do things.
I don’t see concessions working either, as most of the GOP is already top 1% friendly. I’d be surprised if there are any major things that Trump wants in the laws that the GOP doesn’t.
He’ll definitely take the speaking slot and go over his time, but will that be enough? Somehow I doubt it
I think Trump has enough of a persecution complex that he might really want to blow things up if he doesn’t win just to get back at the people who tried to take him down. In other words, if he doesn’t win, it’s the fault of Priebus and the Losers, so making Priebus and the Losers pay will be the goal.
Of course, he might just get bored and walk away. I can’t predict between the two.
There’s really nothing they can do to prevent him from running except to take him at his word that he wants to be treated with respect. Given how prickly he is though, I’m not even sure it’s possible. I don’t think Megyn Kelly was particularly disrespectful and look what happened.
But while Trump will draw more Republican votes than Democratic votes, but unless he’s willing to spend $100 million or so he’ll end up with Ralph Nader numbers, not Ross Perot numbers. Plus if he actually was trying to win, he’d start emphasizing more of his centrist and liberal positions.
Those are my hopes anyway.
Even now, Trump isn’t even really running a campaign. he’s just got his name out there, and since it’s a big name, it’ll get a certain level of support. But you can’t win without campaigning, and you certainly can’t run an independent campaign without a ballot access drive.
Trump can’t threaten an independent candidacy if he can’t get on the ballot, and he can’t get on most state ballots without petition drives, which means hiring a lot of people and mobilizing a lot of volunteers. In other words, running an actual campaign: