John Boehner supports Paul Ryan for President if there is a contested convention:
Let me posit an alternative: Trump does a deal. He gets to be Vice President in return for not causing a fuss. It’s simultaneously a non-job and the best job in the world.
Tump would never agree to that. He’s already “predicting” riots if he doesn’t get the nomination.
I think the Republican Establishment has been running scared of a Trump third party candidacy all along. I think at this point, they’d be better off booting Trump and throwing their support behind Kasich, and let the chips fall where they may. They lose this election, but this election is already lost. They make it clear that Trump’s behavior is not acceptable and when Trump loses (as a third party, he’s toast) it takes the wind out of the sails of this rebellion. Next time they run a genuine moderate and start trying to win back the Clinton Republicans.
Yeah, it will hurt, but they are living in Hurt World right now and it’s their own damn fault. They can’t win the presidency without the moderate Republicans (neither can the Dems, usually,) and they need to stop chasing the lunatic fringe.
Won’t happen, of course. Modern Republicans are all about the short term.
Not for someone driven solely by ego.
Besides, I thought the whole deal with Trump supporters was that they needed jobs. Maybe you should listen to what they’re saying.
Oh, no, you can find plenty of those at any Trump rally. (Assuming those even count as Republicans.)
Just look for the old pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals.
Allow me to be the contrarian.
I think the reports of the death of the Republican party have been highly exaggerated.
My argument in a word: “Hillary”.
Everyone knows a third party run hands the election to Hillary. So I predict they will all line up and kiss ass like they are supposed to. There will be some grousing at the convention, maybe even speeches given on the main stage against Trump. But Trump got the votes, and Trump will be the nominee. By November, we will see Cruz, Rubio, Boehner, Ryan, name-your-Republican … all line up to encourage the party to vote for Trump over Hillary. The Never-Trump movement is still just a subset of the the Never-Hillary movement. The general election will be closer than the SDMB today can fathom, quite possibly a Trump victory. Even if Trump loses, I predict he gets 47%+ of the popular vote. The same backward half of the country that voted to re-elect GWB, and voted for McCain and Romney. The Senate and House will remain R. If Trump loses, they go through the same post-mortem soul searching they did last time, learn nothing (again), come back in 2020 and hold a similarly ugly circus (maybe even uglier, though it is hard to imagine) to pick a nominee, and then they all line up to kiss ass again, because … Hillary.
You guys continue to give America too much credit. I would *love *to be wrong.
Like H.L. Mencken said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public. I only hope and pray that > 50% of the voting population is non-moron.
I have to wonder if anyone in Trump’s campaign has any political acumen. Has he established any relationships with state party leaders? Does he have the chops to swing all the back-room deals that will be going on if the convention goes to a second ballot? I somehow doubt it…if he doesn’t go into the convention with the delegates he needs, he’ll get steamrolled on the 2nd ballot.
This may be where the Forgotten Man, the Most Irrelevant Man in America, steps up and does his job: Reince Preibus.
His take is more than a little oversimplified. On the first ballot, many of the delegates are determined by popular vote, depending on the state’s rules. After that, if necessary, everyone’s free to vote for Rin Tin Tin if they want.
So far, so good, but the one problem is that there are no “poor performances elsewhere which knock [Kasich] out very soon after March 15.”
There isn’t that much going on between now and New York on April 19, and the only primary in that interval where there might be high expectations for Kasich would be Wisconsin on April 5. And I doubt that a mediocre result there would be enough to get him to drop out. My guess is that he’ll fold after a poor result in either (a) New York on April 19, or (b) the ‘Northeast Corridor primary’ on April 26 (MD, DE, PA, CT, RI). (Of course, if he does well in one or both, he’s in the race for the duration.)
He’s on the rules committee. The rules are decided before the first vote.
Perhaps the only upshot of yesterday’s results is that it gave Kasich some cards to play at the convention. Whether or not he continues to campaign between now and the convention is really irrelevant.
John Boehner did a first: he endorsed a candidate for President who isn’t even running: Paul Ryan.
I love JOhn Kasich, but I would cheer a Ryan nomination.
Boehner’s not the first establishment guy to say that. It’s pretty clear what the establishment’s chosen path is, at least as of today.
So Trump’s goal is to short-circuit any gamesmanship by winning enough delegates (and having enough angry protesters on standby) that the establishment is pretty well checkmated before the convention begins.
I am guessing that option #3 will happen. I do not know what will happen at the convention, but I suspect that Trump has been acting as a covert Clinton operative all along. After or during a raucous convention with lots of shouting and booing (even more than in 2012 with the pro-Ron Paul delegates), Trump may fail to gain nomination or choose to drop out of the running…and endorse Hillary Clinton. I could imagine Trump saying something like:
*Republican Party, you’re fired. This whole campaign has been a ruse to create additional chaos on the GOP primary. Bill and Hillary Clinton are friends of mine. I made a deal with the Clintons. I wrote a book about making deals; it’s called The Art of the Deal. * Did you really think that someone serious about becoming President would talk like I do? I said some not so nice things about Hillary…I said that she was the worst Secretary of State in the history of this country…but that was all part of the ruse. Anyway, this campaign has been a beautiful work of art…a hyuuuuuge deal. The Republican Party is going to get shlonged in November. The 90s were great. The Clintons were in the White House during that time; they can make America great again. We still need to build a wall, and the Trump Organization plans to put in a bid for that contract.
The problem for the money Republicans isn’t stopping Trump at the convention, they can cook up some rules, or change whichever rules, and do the job. The problem is getting away with it.
So, for now, their only option is to lay whatever groundwork it may require, and pray Trump fucks up bad enough to make him so hugely unpopular with his base that they will shrug and go along with it.
And it’ll be Romney. Remember, you heard it here again.
Jeet Heer offers a variant of this hypothesis on twitter: [INDENT] “The Producers” but with a prank candidate who runs for the presidency to get publicity and ends up winning. - Aug 2015
As I keep saying, this is like “The Producers” – Trump wants to fail & bow out, but he keeps winning. - Feb 2016 [/INDENT] https://newrepublic.com/minutes/131978/donald-trump-keep-going-heidi-cruz
We can’t rule something like that out. Trump is a sales guy. He also has a thoughtful shtick that he has kept under wraps during the campaign. He keeps his cards close to his vest. I find this scenario improbable (I say most people conducting such a strategy would have dropped a tell by now) but not impossible or even implausible.
elucidator’s point is also valid. Trump’s campaign could blow up. At that point, rule shenanigans would even be appropriate. Same odds: improbable but not implausible.
Hell, M&M, everything about this campaign is way out past “improbable”, beyond the orbit of batshit! Poor bastards are hoping for a sensible solution to an irrational problem.
In August 2015, I endorsed Nate Silver’s odds for Trump as 2-4%. Nate Silver backtracked during the fall. Still, during this cycle it’s inappropriate to blindly apply historical patterns. Because historical patterns have been disrupted. The top 2 GOP contenders are wholly unacceptable to the GOP establishment. This blows my mind. It’s not like the establishment has high standards: heck, they would be satisfied with dim witted Rick Perry. Or Rubio. Or Kasich. Heck, I suspect failed CEO Carly Fiorina is looking pretty good right now.