The assumption seems to be that he’s a one trick one note pony, and, after (if) he loses big to Hillary, his current supporters will turn away dejectedly and throw their hands up in despair.
Except that Trump just gave the next powermonger to come down the pike the perfect road map to the GOP nomination-except next time we might not get one who is mentally and emotionally unbalanced and is essentially making it up as he goes along, but instead knows exactly what buttons to push in the electorate, cold bloodedly and calculatedly, from beginning to end.
There aren’t many (any?) with his name recognition and money to “self fund.” I’m not saying it can’t happen again, but I think the odds are against it in the near future.
Well, I think he gets smoked, the Republican Party is going to spend some time running far, far away from Trumpism in an attempt to repackage themselves. Those voters who were very pro-Trump will still exist, but there isn’t necessarily any personality that would seem to coalesce those people. I guess Trump could lose again (under the “we were cheated” rhetoric), but I think the Republican leadership would be far more prepared.
The True Scotsman Conservatives have still not had their man. Trump was never that man, he was an outsider who waved shiny in their faces. This will never be over until a Santorum or Cruz or someone of that ilk goes down in flames or we see a wider revolt like is just starting to take place in Kansas.
The Trump demographic is shrinking. This are the last dangerous lunges of a dying cornered animal. Four years from now they will be easier to defeat than they were this cycle.
Yea. I think this year we saw that the experience of 2000 sort of “inoculated” the Dems from a candidate seriously threatening to set themselves up as a third party candidate. As much as Bernie may have wanted the Presidency, he never even really seemed to consider turning himself into the next Ralph Nader.
So I think the optimists view is that something similar will happen to the GOP. Trump will be such an undeniable disaster that even his supporters will view the next demagogue as just another electoral disaster in the making.
Let’s see, Huey Long was at the height of his powers in 1932-35, Strom Thurmond ran (and won a number of states) in 1948, George Wallace got 46 electoral and 9 million popular votes in 1976, Ross Perot got nearly 19% of the vote in 1992…
So every 15-20 years, someone pops up who is seen as an ‘outsider’ (OK, Thurmond was a long-time Senator, just go with me here…), someone who represents ‘our values’, is seen as plain-spoken and willing to ‘tell it like it is’.
The difference is up until now is that they haven’t been able to hijack one of the established parties and had to run (Long never did, but had influence in who was running) as a third party candidate. But otherwise, despite differing political views, the Kingfish and Strom and the rest would recognize their brother populist in a heartbeat.
So to answer the question, depends on how history plays out, but I’d look to the election of 2032 if I were you…(I’ll be 79 then and hobbling to the voting booth…unless all voting is done from home via computers by then…)
Cruz just might be that guy. He’s equally hated, brash, loud, and evil, but he’s willing to appear less so. If he stays out of the public spotlight for the next 4 years knowing he won’t be able to accomplish much, and people forget he’s a crazy person, he just might sneak in and take the GOP nomination. Then who knows what will happen in the general?
That’s what I was thinking. I could see Cruz trying to package himself as a Trumpist-like candidate four years from now. His performance at the RNC may have hurt him with Trump’s most hard core supporters, but it also allows him to say that he’s willing to buck the system. And unlike Trump, he’s able to keep the overt craziness to a minimum and not sound like he’s talking out his ass, which means he won’t scare off the establishment. That’s not to say that the establishment will necessarily * like* him, but without all the wild-eyed baggage, they’ll be willing to fall in line behind him when push comes to shove.
I’m going to be very interested in seeing how Cruz acts in the next three years. He’s already drawn back from the bloody confrontations with his own party that earned him his well deserved reputation.
Does he go back to that to try to hold on to that “outsider” claim?
Does he only pop off with that periodically to keep his name out there as a champion of “true conservatives”?
Or does he start positioning himself in a more ‘statesman’ like manner and then in 3 years start claiming that he’s learned how to play the game and now is ready to ‘restore’ America after 12 ‘ruinous’ years of Democratic Presidents?
Because frankly, it’ll be seriously goddamned funny and karmic if the Chinese economy collapses in those 3 years and manufacturing jobs begin moving back under Clinton because of Chinese instability.
Cruz will go full out “I told you so!”. He’ll get a lot of those Trump voters, but the establishment doesn’t like him any better. They know they can’t win with a true conservative, but they can’t win without that base of malcontents either. If this does disintegrate the GOP I’ll consider Trump a hero, in the sense of a Republican Fearless Fosdick. I can’t believe he really wants to be president now, he had a real shot at it a few months ago, and since then he’s done everything he can to undermine himself. This has to be the biggest meltdown in presidential election history. Even the Sarah Palin decision pales compared to this.
I’ve been saying that Trump is the symptom of the disease but not the disease. But make no mistake about it: America’s social, cultural, and political discourse and our institutions are suffering from a potentially terminal illnesses of willful ignorance and paranoid cynicism. As I have remarked in recent days, we are a society that is increasingly incapable of self-regulation when it comes to our thoughts, words, and deeds. Not only this campaign but the last few have pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable, to the point where there are few remaining. When we get to the point where rhetoric and ideas are this toxic, we reach a moment when we can delegitimize and dehumanize others who have noticeable differences. This is extremely dangerous territory we’re wandering into here.
The danger to our democracy is indeed not over; rather, it has probably only just begun. How dangerous is Donald Trump? In the sense that he has a temperament that is demonstrably ill-suited for the complex position of being the commander-in-chief, yeah, he’s a nightmare. But he’s not an ideologue. Someone like Ted Cruz, or God forbid someone who might even be worse that we have yet to hear about…that’s what should be frightening. Donald Trump has proved what is possible to do with the electorate, even if he had no idea what he’d do as president. But I suspect that there are people on the far right who are using this as a blueprint to build a coalition but with more ideological discipline. That would be terrifying.
This is why I’m not entirely convinced that he’s done. No question about it: he’s never looked worse, but I wouldn’t write the obituary on his campaign just yet.
No matter how utterly despicable he becomes - he could come out tomorrow and declare that he wants to deport all black people to Africa and allow sport hunting of Mexicans - I don’t see him getting less than 30% of the vote. Because there are those who will vote Republican no matter what, and there are those who will vote for him because they refuse to let Hillary Clinton win.
Trump and his current supporters are making their excuses for why it’s totally unfair that Trump didn’t win. If Trump loses, they’ll just say the system is rigged. That means (in their world), that Donald didn’t really lose, he was cheated.
In which case, there’s no reason for his current supporters to turn away from him. Donald isn’t going away. He has his whole personality invested in being a strong winner. He’ll need constant reinforcement from his supporters that he was cheated and that they really love him.
Plus, it’s not like the media will turn him away. Unless Donald loses his phone, he’s going to keep right on tweeting and calling into Fox news. He drives rating and the tv “news” shows like his brand of “controversy”. They have to put him on or else they’ll be called unfair and unbalanced.
I don’t think the issue is going to turn on what demagogue can get out there and attract votes.
The issue is going to be whether the GOP can organize itself in such a way that they refrain from putting so many runners in the first wave. If the GOP had had Trump, Carson, Huckabee, and Cruz at the beginning, representing the loonies, but had had only one or two from among Bush, Walker, Rubio, Christie, Kasich, and Fiorina running as legitimate candidates, Trump could not have polled the early high numbers he did which would have allowed whatever responsible candidate who made it past Super Tuesday to become the default candidate. The legitimate candidates all shot each other in a circular firing squad, letting the buffoon take high numbers that gave him the impetus to roll up subsequent primaries/caucuses.