# The 2016 Republican candidates **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [January 9, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444 "2015-01-09T22:38:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/361 "2015-01-26T13:06:05Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Nonsense. When Obama announced his campaign for President, nearly 50% of Americans had [little or no idea](https://probonostats.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/obamas-name-recognition-history/) who he was. The primary campaign made him a “big name” – he wasn’t a big name before it by any means (except perhaps to political junkies). “nearly” 50% not knowing who he is is a number that all of the non-Hillary Democrats would kill for. Biden excepted, they are all polling at 65% never having heard of them. When more than half the country knows who you are, that’s pretty big. It’s not Clinton-big, but it’s big. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/362 "2015-01-26T13:10:31Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > “nearly” 50% not knowing who he is is a number that all of the non-Hillary Democrats would kill for. Biden excepted, they are all polling at 65% never having heard of them. > > When more than half the country knows who you are, that’s pretty big. It’s not Clinton-big, but it’s big. It’s not big for presidential candidates. You’re reaching here. One speech did not make Obama a “celebrity” and a “big name”, except perhaps for political junkies and Democratic insiders. It turned some heads. But when half the country doesn’t know your name, you’re not a “big name” when it comes to presidential politics. Just face it – Obama made himself a big name by campaigning. Just like Bill Clinton. Just like any Democrat has the opportunity to. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/363 "2015-01-26T13:13:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > When was it not (beyond scandals like Gary Hart, which can probably be placed in the “bad campaign move” category anyway)? Kerry, as weak a candidate as he was (and he almost won the election!) still campaigned better than Edwards, Clark, and the rest. In Kerry’s case, I think it’s more that Democrats glommed onto the idea of a veteran to oppose that chickenhawk Bush, and when Clark proved underwhelming, that left Kerry. Of course, before Kerry they wanted Dean, but that train derailed. > [@](#): > > If so, that “most plausible candidate” ran the most skillful campaign. Al Gore ran a better campaign than Bradley (perhaps largely because Bradley wasn’t trying very hard). Dukakis ran a better campaign than his opponents (unfortunately!). I don’t know about Mondale – that goes back too far for me. Sometimes a primary is about name recognition and special interest support more than who has the more compelling message. > [@](#): > > That’s what primaries are for. We shall see. The most viable general election candidate does not always, or even usually, win in the primaries. > [@](#): > > Name recognition before the election doesn’t matter (see Obama). If there’s a big name-recognition gap on election day, then that’s obviously a problem, but that’s what the primary and general election campaigns are for. It’s not enough to know who a candidate is. Lots of non-voters know who the candidates are. There’s just nothing that inspires them to vote. Will voters turn out for Joe Biden or Martin O’Malley? That’s not a question that’s hard to answer now. WE know who they are and whether they can inspire. They aren’t going to suddenly get charisma in two years. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/364 "2015-01-26T13:17:30Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Sometimes a primary is about name recognition and special interest support more than who has the more compelling message. > > The most viable general election candidate does not always, or even usually, win in the primaries. This doesn’t detract from anything I’ve said. The most skillful campaigner wins. That doesn’t mean they’re the best general election candidates. > [@](#): > > It’s not enough to know who a candidate is. Lots of non-voters know who the candidates are. There’s just nothing that inspires them to vote. Will voters turn out for Joe Biden or Martin O’Malley? That’s not a question that’s hard to answer now. WE know who they are and whether they can inspire. They aren’t going to suddenly get charisma in two years. I’m sure many said the same thing about Bill Clinton in 1991. There’s just no way to be confident about something like this as early as it is. Frankly, it just sounds like wishful thinking coming from you. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/365 "2015-01-26T13:22:20Z")
Bill Clinton had charisma. He did fall flat at the 1988 convention, but anyone can have a lousy speech. There are no Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas in that field. But that’s okay, we don’t have any Ronald Reagans. This election might be all kinds of boring and uninspiring, which is fine by me. Keeps the morons at home watching reality TV while the people who actually take the time to find out what’s going on decide who are next President is going to be. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/366 "2015-01-26T13:23:57Z")
Nominate Cruz or Palin and see how motivated Democrats can be. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/367 "2015-01-26T13:26:10Z")
I’ve heard that one before: 2004. Sorry, but if you can’t turn your folks out to oppose GWB, you can’t turn them out to oppose anyone. Which is a credit to Democratic voters in one sense. They only come out to vote FOR something. They generally show their disapproval by abstaining. In any case, the odds of Cruz or Palin being the nominee are extremely slim. With Bush and Romney in the race, along with Christie, there are just too many reasonable options to default to. Cruz and Palin will get their share of base love, as will Carson, but when they implode, there’ll be an establishment guy there to take up the baton. WHich kinda sucks for my man Jindal, and guys like Kasich and Walker. It’s hard to see where a candidate who is neither extreme nor lavishly funded fits in the way the field is shaping up. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/368 "2015-01-26T13:34:39Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Bill Clinton had charisma. He did fall flat at the 1988 convention, but anyone can have a lousy speech. There are no Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas in that field. How do you know? I don’t trust your judgment on this. > [@](#): > > But that’s okay, we don’t have any Ronald Reagans. This election might be all kinds of boring and uninspiring, which is fine by me. Keeps the morons at home watching reality TV while the people who actually take the time to find out what’s going on decide who are next President is going to be. Or something completely different and unexpected might happen, as it often does. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/369 "2015-01-26T13:38:22Z")
You don’t have to trust my judgement. I’m sure you know who the candidates are and their strengths and weaknesses. If there was a potential superstar in there, you’d be touting him already. Now I happen to think the GOP field has one potential superstar. Well, two, but the second one isn’t ready: Marco Rubio. The guy who is ready is Bobby Jindal, although he’s not been covering himself in glory lately. Who knows, maybe the guy is just trying to get noticed, figuring any publicity is better than no publicity at this point. He can always backtrack later. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/370 "2015-01-26T13:45:26Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You don’t have to trust my judgement. I’m sure you know who the candidates are and their strengths and weaknesses. If there was a potential superstar in there, you’d be touting him already. No. I liked Obama at the beginning of 2007, but I wasn’t close to absolutely sure about him. People say stuff like this every election, including before '08. > [@](#): > > Now I happen to think the GOP field has one potential superstar. Well, two, but the second one isn’t ready: Marco Rubio. The guy who is ready is Bobby Jindal, although he’s not been covering himself in glory lately. Who knows, maybe the guy is just trying to get noticed, figuring any publicity is better than no publicity at this point. He can always backtrack later. If you think Bobby Jindal (or Rubio) is a potential superstar, then no wonder your judgment is out of whack. Maybe when they finish puberty. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/371 "2015-01-26T13:55:19Z")
With Jindal I’m going against conventional wisdom. Not so with Rubio. Rubio is generally considered to be a rising star, all the more so because he’s been willing to ditch Tea Party orthodoxy. That won him some love in the Beltway. Eleanor Clift seems to have bought into the hoopla: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/23/rubio-2016-is-real-and-it-s-spectacular.html](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/23/rubio-2016-is-real-and-it-s-spectacular.html) Clift also mentions an unspoken reason Rubio might be running: > [@](#): > > A reporter suggests a possible alternative scenario, should the presidency not work out: Rubio, who is just 43, could come back to Florida and run for governor, and get that executive experience that voters look for in a presidential candidate. Given that Republican nominees nearly always come from the pool of candidates who have already run and lost once, perhaps Rubio figures to introduce himself to the primary electorate, make a positive impression, become governor of Florida, and then make his real run in 2024 or 2028. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/372 "2015-01-26T15:04:38Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You can’t trash his background the way you would a Bush or a Romney. Trashing him for the actual stupid stuff that is constantly coming out of his mouth would be much much more effective than trashing him for his background. You are right nobody is going to attack Ben Carson for his neurosurgeon background, but it is absolutely unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/373 "2015-01-26T15:52:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Well, they all seem to want in. Maybe they are just delusional. > [@DigitalC](#): > > It’s kind of a requirement really. I thought I’d take a moment to appreciate the beauty of that response. ---
**Author:** ![CGav8r](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@CGav8r](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CGav8r)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/374 "2015-01-26T15:57:11Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You can’t trash his background the way you would a Bush or a Romney. You \*\*can \*\*show how he is a total hypocrite. How he said that “The disintigration of the family unit and welfare state are enslaving African-Americans and ruining their futures,”, even though he was: -Raised by a single mom in public housing -Fed with food stamps -Supported by welfare -Got his eyeglasses through a state agency -Had medical support through medicad -Benefitted from affirmative action to enter college and medical school -Used Fed’l loans/Pell grants in college -Medical school was paid for with a grand from USPHS Not sure if you pointing out how he benifitted from government largesse, then attacks it is really \*trashing \*his background, but it does show his breathtaking hypocrisy. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/375 "2015-01-26T16:00:41Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Obama was a bona fide celebrity from the moment he gave his 2004 convention speech, eclipsed only by Hillary Clinton. The guy wasn’t on local radio shows swearing up and down that he wouldn’t run for President. He was being interviewed by the big names and asked if he would run because he was a big name. You act as if he was basically Heidi Heitkamp until he won Iowa. On this one, guys, I’m going to have to come down on **adaher** ’s side. On the Sunday after the 2006 midterms, the front page of the WaPo Outlook section, that great font of DC conventional wisdom, was a big “Hillary v. Obama” splash. I remember it irritated the hell out of me at the time, because the Dems had just retaken control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, which was kind of a big fucking deal, and they decided to skip right past it to the coming Presidential campaign. But the relevance of it here is that the most Washington-insidery publication then in existence (since _Politico_ either didn’t yet exist, or hadn’t become what it is) was treating a contest between the two for the nomination as a foregone conclusion (they were right, but it didn’t exactly surprise anybody), and was treating them more or less as equals. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/376 "2015-01-26T16:01:11Z")
No worse than Joni Ernst’s family getting $460,000 in federal aid and then her claiming that she grew up so poor that she had to wear bread bags over her shoes in the winter. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/377 "2015-01-26T16:15:29Z")
Just over half of Americans had heard of Obama _when he officially announced his candidacy_. But media buildup over a candidate always starts well before the official announcement. How many of those Americans had only heard of him because he was going to be running? If Cuomo or O’Malley or Schweitzer form exploratory committees and give national interviews and so on, more people will start hearing of them. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/378 "2015-01-26T17:22:01Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Just over half of Americans had heard of Obama _when he officially announced his candidacy_. But media buildup over a candidate always starts well before the official announcement. How many of those Americans had only heard of him because he was going to be running? If Cuomo or O’Malley or Schweitzer form exploratory committees and give national interviews and so on, more people will start hearing of them. O’Malley’s been pretty obviously running for President for a year or so now. (I’ve been paying attention because he’s the local guy.) He’d like to give national interviews, I’m sure, but doesn’t seem to get much opportunity to do so. How’s his name recognition doing? I believe it’s in the toilet. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/379 "2015-01-26T17:41:56Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > With Jindal I’m going against conventional wisdom. Not so with Rubio. Rubio is generally considered to be a rising star, Really? Rubio was generally considered to be a rising star at this time in 2013. Aside from Eleanor Clift and members of Rubio’s entourage, I don’t hear much of that now. > [@](#): > > all the more so because he’s been willing to ditch Tea Party orthodoxy. That won him some love in the Beltway. Getting love from the Beltway crew has a serious tendency to fail to translate into votes. > [@](#): > > Eleanor Clift seems to have bought into the hoopla: > > [http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/23/rubio-2016-is-real-and-it-s-spectacular.html](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/23/rubio-2016-is-real-and-it-s-spectacular.html) She can join Rich Lowry in the Starbursts Club. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444/380 "2015-01-26T17:54:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **RTFirefly** : > > O’Malley’s been pretty obviously running for President for a year or so now. (I’ve been paying attention because he’s the local guy.) He’d like to give national interviews, I’m sure, but doesn’t seem to get much opportunity to do so. How’s his name recognition doing? I believe it’s in the toilet. There’s still some time to go before official announcements start being made, though. If, at that time, his name recognition is still in the toilet, then he’s pretty much done for as a candidate. We’ll see. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-2016-republican-candidates/709444.md?page=20)