If you haven’t seen it already, you may enjoy:
“Trumped" Starring Matthew Broderick & Nathan Lane
The Candidate (1972), starring Robert Redford.
Karl’s trying to redeem his reputation as a kingmaker from his Election Night Don-Ameche-in-Trading-Places “Turn those machines back on!” meltdown on Fox News while he still can.
At this point, on convention day, what’s the best and worst case (realistic) scenario for the GOP?
I have to imagine that best case is almost that Trump has over the 1237 thresh hold, and is the nominee. He is going to get smoked in the general and drag down the ticket, but at least long term the party can weather the storm.
Worst might be that he is close to 1237, but not over it, and there is a bloody establishment vs. everyone else fist fight. The Trump supporters will (legitimately) feel that they have been dismissed. And the party almost has to split in at least two. Whoever emerges “victorious” is going to have a huge percentage of their own party who doesn’t see them as legitimate. Party in chaos.
I guess what I’m asking is, if I’m Reince Preibus, what am I rooting for as the best case scenario on the day the convention starts? If I’m Hillary/Bernie, what am I rooting for as the worst case scenario?
If I’m a Republican, my best-case scenario is that one candidate enters the convention with at least 51% of the delegates, the others make nice for the cameras, and everyone remembers they hate Hillary Clinton more than each other and comes together for November.
If I’m a Democrat, just reverse the above paragraph.
There are short term best case scenarios, and long term ones. This might be the best short term one - no riots, many Republicans give lip service support, they lose the Senate, but can say when the smoke clears that a real conservative would have won, so there is no need to change anything. That assume Trump doesn’t say “You’re fired” to the whole non-elected power structure. But it is worst case long run since the part does not have to make the changes they saw necessary after 2012.
If Cruz manages to magically get the nomination without cheating (in the eyes of the Trumpists) and also gets smoked, they might have to admit that positions that win primaries are deadly in the general.
A relative moderate plucked from nowhere would be best in November but would probably make the far right walk.
And I agree with your worst case scenario. Which is looking like the most likely case at the moment.
At this point, there is no way anyone other than Trump gets the nomination without there being some degree of “cheating”. The cheating might be within the letter of the law as laid out by the party, but unless there is some huge collapse by Trump, any non-Trump candidate emerging from the convention will be some level of illegitimate. I really think that the GOP might be best just to let Trump happen, long term.
I meant Cruz winning on the first ballot, but that certainly was not clear.
In one sense if Trump doesn’t get enough delegates to win on the first ballot, someone else winning is not cheating at all but reflects a consensus against him. Not that he’s going to see it that way. Any other year, any other candidate and there would be pressure on delegates and former candidates to throw enough delegates his way to create a first-ballot win.
I’m not sure I agree a Trump win is best for them. His negatives are so high that Republican candidates are going to have to disavow him, which will let Trumpists blame the establishment for his loss. That’s going to split the party for some time to come, worse if Trump stays involved.
A side thought - in the old days the former president had a role in this, even if behind the scenes. (And even if not as intimately involved as Bill.) I’ve heard nothing from Bush since Jeb dropped out - not that I blame him.
At this point, I think the best case scenario for the GOP involves Donald Trump and a Zuni Fetish Doll.
I agree with you here, but I still think it’s going to be a hard sell if Trump goes in with the most votes, but not 1237, and walks away without the nomination that it will be seen as legitimate. It’s not cheating because it’s within the rules, but it’s not like the Trump supporters are going to just accept that and support the new candidate. They will see it as cheating.
It’s really like the GOP backed themselves into a corner, and then shot themselves in the dick.
Please never, ever again, even by indirect suggestion, force us to mentally link the concepts of “Donald Trump” and “fetish.”
I think the proper comparison is not short term vs. long term, but low risk vs. high risk. The best-case outcome for the Republicans is that Trump wins fair and square at the convention, and then something happens to sink Clinton’s campaign, and Trump sails to victory with his enthusiastic supporters bringing in a wave of lower offices on his coattails. But that’s extremely unlikely to happen, and the steps towards that are more likely to end up with the party in shambles and a crushing defeat at all levels. The safer bet for Republicans is to repudiate Trump, do everything they can to get a mainstream Republican onto the top of the ticket somehow, lose the Presidency, but avoid having the rest of the races dragged down by Trump. So the real question is, do they feel lucky? Given the trend of Republicans lately to be as un-conservative as possible, I suspect that they do. Their policy of avoiding compromise at all costs means that they view anything less than the best-case scenario as an unmitigated loss, so they’ll go for the only option that gives them any chance at what they think is victory.
“Republicans, this is a .44 Magnum Hillary, it can blow your head clean off! So the question you have to ask yourself is ‘Do I feel lucky?’. Well, do you, punk?”
No wonder Bill used a cigar.
It’s getting uglier. Trump supporter and former campaign adviser Roger Stone is planning a “Days of Rage” scenario, he is putting out a call for Trump supporters to come to Cleveland ready to protest. He calls for “peaceful, nonviolent” protest, but he also says “ride to the sound of the guns.” This Stone also was involved in organizing the “Brook Brothers Riot” in Miami in 2000 in the wake of the disputed presidential election results. And so was John Sweeney, who the Trump campaign is rumored to be about to hire.
Are they going to be smashing windows? Tell me they have plans to smash windows!
The best likely scenario now is for Trump to get ousted in a contested convention, then have him and his most crazy supporters leave the Republican party. The Republicans will lose the election, but then maybe they can work on building a new party with fewer yahoos and maybe a little more appeal to the center that will be alienated by a Bernie or Hillary presidency.
Problem with that is, Republican electoral success has for decades been based on a coalition. If the GOP loses any significant part of that coalition, it will find it much harder to win elections. And the yahoos are a significant part.
Sounds like this Stone guy wasn’t fired or quit from the Trump campaign. Instead he was re-configured to operate a separate organization so to be a plausibly deniable firebreak between the candidate himself and the candidate’s henchmen’s actions.
Sorta like Ernst Rohm and Hitler’s SA in the 1930s.