So, assuming that Trupm does not manage to get the nomination, whether through not getting enough electoral votes to clinch it, or some other machinations on the right, who would be the republican nominee?
Now, to be fair, I don’t think it would be Boehner, as it stands, I doubt his name is even floated at the moment, and he’s probably enjoying his golf game too much to take it anyway.
But, assuming he got it, would he win?
I personally think it’s about the only way for the republican party to win at this point. Trump can’t win. Cruz can’t win if they managed to throw him up there.
As the most moderate of prominent republicans, he would get the votes that Trump and Cruz cannot. He would be able to pull in those on the left that don’t like Hillary. As a left leaning person, I would find myself strongly considering voting for him over Hillary. I am pretty sure he would take Ohio.
I don’t know how he would do with the right fringe, and Trump supporters may not vote for him as the may feel the nomination was “stolen”, but it is not like they are going to vote for the D or the G on the ballot, so they will either stay home, or support the republican nominee.
So, would it behoove the republicans to consider Boehner for the nomination?
Boehner would lose the 30% -40% of Republicans that love Trump because he’s unabashadly racist, and reduced difficult economic and military problems down to simplistic catch-phrases.
So he’d lose badly.
And if they stick with Trump, they’ll lose the 30% - 40% of Republicans who hate Trump for the exact same reasons.
Harold Stassen has a better chance of being nominated than Boehner. If somehow it happened he’d lose big time. The GOP didn’t really want him as speaker, they just didn’t have anyone else. A lot of the same applies to Paul Ryan, representatives don’t make great presidential candidates in general, they only need to win a state district to get into office, it doesn’t say much about their national appeal at all. Boehner had a brief vacuous run as Speaker of the House, not much of basis for a run at the top spot.
Do you figure the only hypothetical way to square that circle for the GOP would be if Trump, like, (a) declares that he needs to pull out of the race for medical reasons, and then (b) loudly tells all of his supporters to vote for Guy X – who doesn’t say any of the stuff that Trump-haters hate, but Trump-lovers assume it’s all still in effect?
This sort of thing makes me stabby. The vast majority of Speakers serve for just a short time. Boehner was the 12-longest serving Speaker–longer than either Pelosi or Gingrich. And yet Boehner somehow keeps getting singled out–I don’t know how or why.
The not having anyone else seems that it would work well in his favor.
I am more talking about the general election in the case (unlikely as it is) that he is nominated. I think he probably stands the best chance out of pretty much all prominent republicans these days.
The OP’s assertion that Boehner would win Ohio is silly. Sure Boehner cruised to easy wins in his heavily gerrymandered district. The presidential general election requires winning the entire state. Nobody outside of his district his any particular reason to like him, and he would be required to start campaigning from square one. Which is really the problem with any of these scenarios. If the nominee is not someone who has been running for the past year, they have no time at all to get their message out.
There will be no contested convention, and no ‘replacement candidate.’ Trump is running unopposed for the rest of the primary season. He’s guaranteed the nomination. I can’t even begin to figure out the nefariousness it would take to wrest it from him at this point.
Against Clinton? No. People call her uncharismatic, but she positively oozes charm and power by comparison to Boehner. And if personalities somehow turn out to be a non-factor, the result is the same – no way can the Pubs beat the Dems this year based on their respective political agendas alone.
Fair enough. My business is in Boehner’s ex-district, and my employees were talking about it the other day. I was mostly curious as to what a larger audience would think.
Nope - they are stuck with Trump. They’re done. The options at this point are to lose with Trump or to force Trump out and lose. Even in your scenario above, there would be enough folks who would just take a pass on voting at all.
In summary; For this presidential election cycle, the Republicans are screwed.
If they allow Trump to get nominated, they’re running Trump as their candidate. It validates every nasty thing Liberals have said about them since Reagan was in office.
If they stop Trump and run anyone else, they’re saying that the expressed will of their political base doesn’t matter and that they’ll use blatant rules-lawyering to get what they want. It validates every nasty thing their base has said about them since even before Reagan.
In the first case, they scare away moderates. In the second case, they’re practically taking out a shotgun and running off some of their most ardent supporters, because even people who don’t like Trump will break with them if they think the party leadership is being blatantly unfair and elitist. In both cases, they lose 2016, and they might be setting the stage to lose in 2020 as well.
Overall, I think the scenario where Trump runs is at least minimally salvageable in terms of the party still existing in 2020. They’ll be able to say “Look, we didn’t like Trump, but the people spoke, so we ran the bastard. Let’s have a good primary this time.” The second scenario is the party leadership shoveling shit down their base’s throats and expecting them to come back for seconds.