Do these “sources” also include people who actually know anything? The Israeli parliament, prime minister, supreme court and the vast majority of government agencies reside in Jerusalem. The rest of the world can say that Tel Aviv or, for that matter, Hoboken, NJ are the capital of Israel, and it wouldn’t make any difference. The proof is in the pudding.
Now, for various arcane historical and legal reasons, teh U.S. (and other governments) choose to maintain the fiction that the capital of Israel is something other than Jersusalem. I don’ like it, but I accept it. Just don’t talk to me about “sources”.
I’ve lived through enough elections to know that there are always these periods of ‘certainty’ about what’s going to happen just blow up spectacularly. We honestly cannot predict these things, especially since they are often changed by black swans that are utterly unpredictable, like terror attacks, economic or financial collapses or booms, or dramatic foreign relations changes.
An honest prediction, however, becomes a picture of your thinking about how the economy works, which can be used later to get a better handle on where your thinking may be going wrong.
OK, let’s do the math. Trump gets 1/3 of the vote - 824 delegates. That leaves 1648 delegates divided three ways. That’s about 550 per each of the other three candidates, which would leave everybody in the upper three figures - the standard I posited - if it breaks that evenly.
And of course it won’t. There’s no way both Rubio and Kasich are going to pile up 500+ votes, for instance. At most one of them gets into the mid three figures, so under the ‘Trump gets 1/3’ scenario, you’d quite possibly get Cruz and the Rubio/Kasich survivor getting ~700 delegates.
No, I meant one third of the vote, but say, 40% of the delegates. Trump would have fallen short of the delegates he needed by a pretty good margin, but he wouldn’t exactly have a claim on the support of Republican party voters either.
Granted. If we have a more or less 3-way tie with Trump, Cruz, & Rubio, plus poor Kasich trailing back there somewhere then the convention has a deep problem. But one they *must *solve.
Choosing any of the front runners is choosing somebody 2/3rds of the primary voters demonstrated they didn’t like.
Choosing Kasich (or Rubio if he continues to collapse to Kasich-like final delegate numbers) is choosing somebody 80%+ of the primary voters demonstrated they didn’t like.
Choosing somebody else, e.g. Romney or Ryan, is taking the choice away from the voters entirely. At the gain of putting in somebody who hasn’t bee drug through the mud for the last 6 months. The voters haven’t demonstrated a big positive for this pick, but they also haven’t demonstrated a big negative. Viewed in the most charitable light, this is almost a do-over for the capital P Party; a chance to take on board the lessons learned from the careening clown car since January and before.
If I was the kingmaker I’d be watching the opinion polls as we drive towards convention time and be commissioning some clandestine polls for how the public would react to the convention drafting a Romney or a Ryan.
The Republican party in recent years has been a bit of a three-legged stool. Right now it’s being converted from a three-legged stool into a three-branched wishbone. Trump, Cruz/Rubio, and Kasich have each got a good grip on a different branch and are pulling like mad in different directions. That tearing sound you’re hearing is the 'nads of the Establishment.
Trump will have the most delegates in most scenarios. Therefore, he will declare himself the “winner”. His delegates, those who are not disguised party hacks, will buy into him being the “winner”. Once Trump realizes the party will not coalesce around him he will march his delegation out onto the streets of Cleveland. Game over, Hillary wins.
Assuming the delegate-count math works out right in the end, I still think they could sell a “most folks voted for Cruz or Rubio, so here’s the Cruz/Rubio ticket” reply.
Whatever trick they pull out of their hat in the off chance Trump doesn’t win outright might get them their desired candidate but it won’t unify their party. There are no good options left, there is no “this is how the GOP wins” plans.
If not Trump, who? If they had a respectable candidate who could plausibly win the general, he’d *be *winning already. If you’re one of the sane minority in the GOP, and your choices are Trump and Cruz, which they now are, what do you do? Probably sit it out, and possibly even vote for Clinton. You’re not going to lift a finger to help either Shit Sandwich or Giant Douche.
Do you have any source for that or is it just gut? I ask because at least in January Trump and Cruz were each other’s supporters biggest second choice.
That’s a measure of how many people like Rubio as their first choice. In theory, Rubio could be everybody’s second choice without getting any votes at all. I don’t know that there has been much polling on second choices.
Rubio WAS the establishment candidate. I don’t think he is any more. He kind of showed his ass in the debates going after Trump by trading juvenile insults. A lot of Republicans I’ve been reading have said, “Well, Rubio took one for the team. Someone had to go after Trump like that and we’re glad he did - but watching him do it, there’s no way he’s Presidential material.”
Rubio has had a lot of trouble trying to build a sense of gravitas and outgrow his boyish looks. His public spat with Trump undid all that.
On the other hand, Cruz came out looking smarter and calmer, and Kasich’s stock also went up because he looked like the grownup in the room. Probably too little too late for Kasich (who would be my choice out of the bunch), but Cruz probably benefited the most from the circus of the last week.
Realistically it’s down to Trump and Cruz, OK? Somebody who’d rather have Kasich or Rubio or one of the other low-energy losers is going to think hard about Clinton instead.
No Rubio or Trump voter I know would pick Clinton over Cruz. The main reason Rubio voters don’t like Cruz is simply because they don’t think he can beat Hillary. Kasich voters… maybe. But I think most of his would still go to Cruz over Clinton.
If Trump is nominated, on the other hand… There are a LOT of Republicans who would vote for Clinton over Trump if you put a gun to their head and forced them to choose, but most of those would rather just stay home and weep.
But that’s not going to happen, because I predict that if Trump does get the nomination, there will be a 3rd party run by someone more in the mainstream.
If someone like Jim Webb ran as an independent, I think he could peel off a lot of votes from both Democrats and Republicans. I could also see someone like Rick Perry trying to start up a ‘Constitution Party’, or a ‘Federalist Party’ or something like that, with a strong message about states’ rights, border security, and a scaled down Washington.
That would probably just help Democrats, as it would give Republicans who might hold their nose and vote for Trump a ‘safe’ out, and further split the right.
The most realistic scenario for a brokered convention is if Trump fails to get 50% of the delegates and Cruz is close behind, say 40-35. In that case I could see Republican powerbrokers swallowing their personal distaste for Cruz and deciding that he is much less of a threat to party interests and orthodoxy than Trump.
The problem for Cruz is that his best states are behind him. There are also a fair number of blue/purple winner take all/most states coming up where Trump will be hard to stop. Could Cruz beat Trump in a two-man race in California for example ?
It may depend on how intense a scorched earth campaign the Republican party can organize against Trump and whether it will keep him stuck in the 35-40 zone even as candidates drop out.
After an inconclusive ballot, the door is open for more nominations, right? Or is there some rule that nominations are closed after the first ballot?
Either way, I wonder if voters would prefer a candidate who put himself through the debate ordeals, etc. (I do see Romney and Ryan are the obvious exceptions.) Which brings us back to …
Kasich. Is he popular in Pennsylvania? Could he win it in November? If the GOP takes Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, they won’t need any other swing state. :mad:
