I honestly don’t know how anyone could think this. Do you imagine Trump would veto any bill that has a single thing he doesn’t like in it? Because I can sure imagine Cruz doing precisely that. Cruz has actually demonstrated that he doesn’t mind a broken government. And while Cruz might not get all litigious and insult tweet his detractors, you can be sure he will fuck with them somehow. Cruz said last year, when speaking of ripping up the Iran deal that “if the Ayatollah doesn’t understand that we might have to introduce him to 72 virgins” but I’m to believe Trump is more likely to get the US into a war? And Supreme Court picks, I can see Trump nominating some hacks but I shudder at who Cruz would put up.
Awesome! Glad to hear it. 
This is IMO a fallacy, albeit one which a surprising number of very smart and highly credentialled philosophers and especially economists believe. My go-to counterpoint is to use the analogy of stoning someone to death, as prescribed in the Bible for brides who are not virgins on their wedding night, and a number of other “sins”, or as portrayed in the Shirley Jackson story “The Lottery”. Someone could use this type of logic to rationalize to themselves “I’m not guilty of stoning so-and-so to death, because if I had not thrown any stones, they’d still be dead, and just the stones I threw would not be enough on their own to kill them.” It’s also reminiscent of the old idea of how many grains of rice it takes to make a “heap”.
I think if you vote for someone and they win, you bear partial responsibility for their win, even though they won by more than one vote. And if you fail to vote, and the person you wanted to win loses, you bear partial responsibility for that as well, even though they lost by more than one vote.
Then parties need to get smart about it and close up the primary, requiring people to register for one side or another several months ahead of time, when they can’t be sure how the strategic angle will play out. Some might still register for the opposite party so as to be able to regularly engage in mischief, but I think most would rather preserve their option to pick their own party’s standardbearer. (If I had been forced to choose six months or even a month ago, I would have registered as a Democrat.)
I don’t believe presidents really have authority over nukes in that sense, kind of like what was being discussed on Maher.
Also, everything that **CarnalK **said about Cruz was spot on.
If you’re thinking of voting strategically for Trump to help the Democrats, you’re not thinking strategically enough.
The process and timing by which the Republican nominee is selected may well be more important than who ultimately gets the nod.
If Trump seals up the nomination by Super Tuesday or the March 15 primaries, that gives the party a long time to (for better or for worse, enthusiastically or holding their noses) to coalesce around him, to heal rifts, to shift focus to away from Republican red meat issues, and to take aim at (assuming she’s secured her position by then) Clinton. The longer the Republican nomination remains unresolved, the more the remaining candidates spend time and funding sniping at each other (and as Rubio showed this week, demeaning themselves getting down in the mud).
Optimally, Republicans would go into the convention without any candidate holding a majority of delegates, ensuring a floor fight. Whoever emerges from the convention would, at best, be seen as someone not supported by the majority of the party, and at worst, be seen as an illegitimate candidate chosen by party insiders. The candidates would have to spend the spring and summer advocating their conservative credentials and trying to bring each other down, rather than trying to appeal to the general electorate. A significant part of the party will leave the convention with hurt feelings. And there will be very little time to build a general election campaign.
So, if you really want to help the Democrats by voting strategically for a Republican, the best way is to do what you can to assure that there remain at least three viable candidates for as long as possible, preferably into the convention. At this point, a vote for Trump is a vote for ending the Republican primary sooner, rather than later. Instead of voting for Trump, probably the most strategic thing to do is to figure out whether Cruz or Rubio has the best chance of coming in first, or a strong second in your state, and voting for him.
Alternatively, assuming the Democratic nomination isn’t resolved by the time you vote, probably the best thing to do to help the Democrats is to vote for the candidate you think will be strongest in the general election so that the Democratic-side fight is resolved as quickly as possible .
Billdo, I feel pretty confident Hillary is on the glide path, otherwise I would indeed just vote for her.
I see the logic behind trying to keep things scrambled as long as possible. This was the intent behind the actual Rush Limbaugh original “Operation Chaos”. But I think Trump is so toxic, it’s more like the McCaskill-Aiken thing, where what’s important is ensuring he is the nominee. (I used to say “or Cruz”, because I think he’s just about as unelectable; but I don’t think he’s viable any longer.)
My guess would be that Cruz would nominate Roy Moore or someone like him.
I think that Cruz will, at worst, bring on a second Great Depression. I think that Trump will, at worst, set off World War Three. Further, I think that Trump is more likely to reach his worst-case scenario than Cruz is to reach his, because there are more checks and balances on the sorts of harm that Cruz could inflict than the sort Trump could inflict.
Cruz is bad. Trump is worse.
Yeah. Trump is bad because he’s an erratic bully. Cruz is bad because he does not care if it all burns. Trump is pro-Trump. Cruz is anti-government. Trump does not benefit if the government stops functioning. Cruz does.
You’ll be a lot better off when you realize that (A) this country is a republic, not a democracy, and (B) democracy is the very worst form of government ever devised, worse even than monarchy. If you don’t believe that, look up the phrase “tyranny of the majority.”
Yeah, that’s so Republican.
If WW3 happened, it would likely impact the value of Trump’s New York real estate holdings, so I am pretty sure he’ll try to avoid that.
That is the wisest choice now, history BTW does show that on the most recent brokered conventions the survivor goes to defeat. This is usually because many of the ones backing the losing candidate in a contested convention cry foul and do not want to support much the candidate that came from a divided house.
All the people talking about Trump bringing on WWIII or being the last president sound unhinged. TDS - Trump Derangement Syndrome.
If Trump loses the Republicans will be able to rationalize it as him being a fake conservative so they’ll probably try to push another Cruz/Rubio type. If Cruz is nominated and loses they’re in a pickle. There’s always enough excuses to go around, everyone hates Cruz, he’s creepy and has no charisma, whatever, but maybe it could help the GOP lose the anti-intellectual baggage.
If Hillary loses against Trump, lord knows what the Dems do. There won’t be enough popcorn in the world.
Yeah, to me, Trump is self-aggrandizing and foolish, but he’s not irrational.
I think he’s a terrible candidate for the US because he makes it okay to be openly nativist and racist. After all, it’s hard to argue that we have a cultural opposition to racism if we have a nominee of one of our major parties who says the things Trump says. And it emphasizes and disparages the “otherness” non-whites in this country. That’s unacceptable and ugly.
But policy-wise? He is to the left of Cruz and Rubio on most things. He is not the enemy of all government the way Cruz is. And I don’t think he would deliberately cripple the federal government the way I think Cruz would try to do.
I’m not convinced that Trump would be worse than Rubio or Cruz. Three hawks who want to load all the immigrants into rail cars and give us “free market” health care. Rubio acts like an angry kid and Cruz thinks the best government is broken government. Would Trump potentially appoint a pro-choice Justice? Probably not, but the 15% chance that he would is better than the 0% chance from Cruz or Rubio.
I’ll probably be voting on the Democratic ticket anyway since there might be down ticket races I want a say in but, if someone wants to vote for Trump and hope he loses in the general, I say go for it. The other two guys are just as shitty.
I obviously agree with most of that, but I want to key in on the part I bolded. My sister is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada but lives in Canada. She says she is constantly getting asked why Trump is so popular in the U.S. So, yes: it’s embarrassing and makes us look bad. In that respect, it would be better if it had never happened.
But it’s too late to undo what he’s done so far. Therefore, I’d ask which is worse:
(1) Trump gets barely edged out for the nomination (perhaps at a contested convention where he has a plurality of the delegates), and a lot of people see it as malfeasance on the part of the GOP establishment.
(1a) Trump runs as a third party candidate, and possibly gets Perot-level numbers. This assures an easy win for Hillary, but also cements Trump’s legacy as “one of the best showings by a third party candidate, ever”. He creates some sort of brownshirt third party that the government has to provide matching funds to in 2020 at least, maybe longer.
(1b) Trump declines to run, but (like Jesse Ventura) endlessly declares that if he hadn’t had the nomination “stolen” from him, he would have swept to victory against Hillary. No one can really prove he is wrong.
(2) Trump earns an outright majority of the delegates, becomes the Republican nominee, and then loses the general election in a massive landslide.
I think for the reputation of the country, (2) serves pretty well to inoculate us against people from other countries looking askance. I mean, do people look at Missouri (Todd Akin), or Delaware (Christine O’Donnell) and say “wow, those states are just really scary and extreme, with those wackos they nominated”? I don’t think so (although the Missouri Legislature is doing their damnedest to rectify that). Their landslide losses redeemed those states, and that is exactly what I think would happen if Trump is the nominee.
I am of the same mind as marshmallow. A Cruz nomination win and a general election loss might be the best thing for the GOP long term. However, a Cruz win in the general would be the worst for the country. He’s got the biggest reward-loss gap.
But don’t worry about enough popcorn if Trump wins. He’s apparently going to bring in the thermonuclear popper. 
But it’s interesting. Go to Free Republic and read about Trump versus Cruz. A lot of people there have abandoned the idea that they just need to nominate a “true conservative.” In 2013, they would have said Romney lost because he was too liberal. Now they’re saying that “true conservatism” maybe isn’t the answer. It’s a big development, and I think it’s important.
Sure he’s explicitly in favour of torturing prisoners, but protecting your right to kill your unborn child? That’s what’s really important.
The good thing about this strategy is that when he wins you can join in the tail-end of the victory parade and attend the cool celebration party claiming “I was there from the beginning.”