The Race for the GOP Nomination - Post-Thanksgiving Thread

[RTFirefly]

@RTFirefly

Maybe the Internet polls that show him at 37% or whatnot have nobody picking him as their second choice, I don’t know. But given that nobody else in those polls is above the low teens, he’s lapping the field if they’re right.

I’m just going, “I don’t think we’re in that reality.” But if we are, he’s all but unstoppable.

Harry Enten of 538 has a piece up this morning about the split in Trump’s apparent support between polls involving live interviews on the one hand, and Internet and automated phone interviews on the other:

Does Donald Trump lead the race for the Republican presidential nomination? Or does he lead it by a “yuuuuuge” margin? Bloomberg recently released a poll that gave Trump 24 percent to Ben Carson’s 20 percent. On the same day, Ipsos released a poll that put Trump at 37 percent to Carson’s 14 percent. Normally, I’d suggest you average the results and move on. But these two polls are emblematic of a deep divide this year first noted by Jonathan Robinson: The Bloomberg poll was conducted over the phone with live interviewers; the Ipsos poll was conducted online.

Enten makes a strong argument for the live interviews being more accurate, but he concedes that it’s less than airtight, and we’ll only know for sure when people start voting in two months.

[BobLibDem]

@iiandyiiii

I think you have Carson way too high, and Bush & Trump a bit high, and Cruz too low, with Rubio a bit low. But other than Carson, you’re not that far from my estimates.

I can’t argue with that. I’m not counting Carson out quite yet because his voters are REALLY low information voters and quite immune to facts and logic.

I think it’s time we face up to a very real possibility of a Trump nomination. How many times have we thought his latest gaffe was fatal? Mexican rapists? No problem for him. McCain not a hero? No problem for him. Implying that a journalist is on the rag? No problem for him. We’re all prone to making the mistake of using real world logic to predict behavior of those who live in an alternate reality. In a world where Bush kept us safe, the deficit and unemployment ballooned under Obama, and Syrian refugees are terrorists unless proven different, the rules of political science just don’t apply. If these low information voters are motivated to come to the polls and the caucuses, they might just carry the day.

[iiandyiiii]

@BobLibDem

I can’t argue with that. I’m not counting Carson out quite yet because his voters are REALLY low information voters and quite immune to facts and logic.

I think it’s time we face up to a very real possibility of a Trump nomination. How many times have we thought his latest gaffe was fatal? Mexican rapists? No problem for him. McCain not a hero? No problem for him. Implying that a journalist is on the rag? No problem for him. We’re all prone to making the mistake of using real world logic to predict behavior of those who live in an alternate reality. In a world where Bush kept us safe, the deficit and unemployment ballooned under Obama, and Syrian refugees are terrorists unless proven different, the rules of political science just don’t apply. If these low information voters are motivated to come to the polls and the caucuses, they might just carry the day.

I think the possibility is very real, but not yet more likely than another candidate, in my view.

[ElvisL1ves]

Modern-day profiles in courage. Or not.

Instead, Bush declared: “Mr. Trump’s plans are not grounded in conservative principles. His proposal is unrealistic. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.” In other words, demonizing and rounding up undocumented Mexican immigrants is fine, so long as it’s done cheap.
…
In September, a New Hampshire man asked whether “we can get rid” of Muslims, and Trump replied, “We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.” Asked about Trump’s comments, Ted Cruz—who hopes that by hugging Trump close, he’ll eventually win over Trump’s voters—declared, “The American people are not interested in the food fight that reporters are trying to stir up.”
…
But the spinelessness reached new heights this Sunday. On CBS’s Face the Nation, John Dickerson asked Bush about a statement by one of Bush’s advisers that Trump’s plan for registering Muslims is “fascist.” Bush ignored the question. Instead he called Trump “uninformed,” “wrong on Syria,” and “not a serious leader.” The strategy was clear: Avoid defending the rights of Muslim Americans, since there’s little market for that among GOP primary voters. Instead, call Trump a lightweight and insufficiently hawkish, and therefore somehow get to his right.
…
On ABC’s This Week, John Kasich was even worse. Martha Raddatz began by asking the Ohio governor about an ad of his that “appears to compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. Is that the comparison?” Of course it’s the comparison. The ad consists entirely of a paraphrase by Col. Tom Moe of German Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous statement that because he did not stand up for Hitler’s initial victims, there was ultimately no one left to stand up for him. Moe just substitutes Trump’s targets for Hitler’s.
…
There’s an irony here. When it comes to Vladimir Putin, ISIS, and Iran, the GOP candidates love denouncing “appeasement.” Yet when it comes to Trump, appeasement is their core strategy. They’re desperate to stop him. But they won’t call him a demagogue or a bigot or worse than Hillary Clinton, because that entails political risk. So they dissemble and evade and thus remind voters why they hate professional politicians. Which makes Trump stronger still.

What doth it profit a candidate etc.

[RTFirefly]

@BobLibDem

I can’t argue with that. I’m not counting Carson out quite yet because his voters are REALLY low information voters and quite immune to facts and logic.

While your characterization of Carson’s supporters is certainly accurate, the question is, are there enough of them now to have a chance of carrying Carson to the nomination, and if not, is there a chance that his support will grow to that level?

The answer to the first part is NO. Carson’s doing slightly under 20% in conventional polls, and more like the low to mid teens in Internet polls. He can’t win the nomination with <20%.

And given that his support is already declining as it sinks in with many of his supporters that he’s too batshit crazy even for them (not to mention a serious grifter besides), it’s hard to see a major resurgence of support for Carson to the levels it was at before his popularity gained him a decent amount of scrutiny. So I’d say the answer to the second question is NO as well. Hence 0% chance of winning the nomination.

YMMV, of course, and if you think the answer to the second question is ‘maybe,’ then you get a nonzero chance of Carson’s winning the nomination.

[BobLibDem]

I think fervor has to factor into it. Maybe you only have 20% of the voters. But if all of your 20% show up and less than half of the 40% who may support someone else show up, then you’re going to win. Historically in Iowa, it’s all been about the ground game. Will this bit of wisdom hold up in 2016? If so, then Cruz may win big and eliminate some of his rivals. If the Trumpians or Carsonites just come out in droves even without being cajoled by organizers, then who knows what happens?

[Chronos]

septimus, you’re right that conventional models say that all of those things are important, and that a candidate can’t win without those things. But the conventional models also say that a candidate can’t sustain a lead in the polls without all of those things, and yet here we are. I think that the only intellectually-honest response at this point is to conclude that Trump is outside the parameters of the conventional models, and that we just don’t know.

My gut instinct is to trust the polls more than the models, because ultimately it’s the ballots that matter, and polls are more like ballots than models are. But I don’t know.

[RTFirefly]

@ElvisL1ves

Modern-day profiles in courage. Or not.What doth it profit a candidate etc.

Wow. Given the National Journal’s place as a dispenser of the conventional wisdom, that’s quite something.

And scrolling down from that piece, the next piece down was by veteran political handicapper Charlie Cook, who said this (bolding mine):

Thinking about the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has generally boiled down to two competing views. The first is that Trump and/or Carson, the consummate political outsiders, will remain at the top of the GOP field, with one or the other ending up as the nominee; the prospect makes some Republicans ecstatic and drives others into a near-clinical depression. The second view: While we certainly don’t know who the GOP nominee will be, we can feel reasonably assured that it won’t be one of those two. Adherents of this view see today’s Republican Party as behaving crazily but not actually insane. Things aren’t ever quite this simple, but in my view, this dichotomy is close enough.

Damn. They’re gonna have to throw some serious shit at the Dems, and fast, to hang onto their BothSidesDoItist credentials.

[That_Don_Guy]

Here’s the schedule I have for the delegate selections through Super Tuesday:

2/1 - Iowa Caucus
27 statewide; proportional
3 uncommitted

2/9 - New Hampshire Primary
20 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 20%
3 uncommitted

2/20 - South Carolina Primary
27 statewide; Winner Take All
7 districts x 3: Winner Take All

2/23 - Nevada Caucus
27 statewide delegates; proportional
The three “superdelegates” must specify in advance who they will vote for before they are selected

3/1 - Super Tuesday
Texas Primary
44 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 20%
(except: all 44 if a candidate gets a majority; if only one candidate gets 20%, proportional among the top two)
36 districts x 3; 2 for first, 1 for second
(except: all 3 if a candidate gets a majority; if the winner does not get at least 20%, then the top three get 1 each)
3 unpledged

Alabama Primary
26 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 20%
(except: all 26 if a candidate gets a majority)
7 districts x 3: 2 for first, 1 for second
(except: all 3 if a candidate gets a majority; if the winner does not get at least 20%, then the top three get 1 each)
3 uncommitted

Alaska Caucus
20 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 12.5%
The three “superdelegates” must specify in advance who they will vote for before they are selected

**Arkansas Primary **
25 statewide; 15% gets 1; remainder are majority or top 3 proportional
4 districts x 3; Majority/2/1
3 uncommitted

Colorado Caucus
All 37 delegates are uncommitted

Georgia Primary
34 statewide; 3 Winner Take All, plus 31 proportional among candidates with at least 20%
(exception: all 34 if a candidate gets a majority)
14 districts x 3: 2 for first, 1 for second
(exception: all 3 if a candidate gets a majority statewide)

Massachusetts Primary
39 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 5%
3 uncommitted

Minnesota Caucus
11 statewide; proportional among candidates with at least 10%
(exception: all 11 if a candidate gets 85%)
8 districts x 3: proportional among candidates with at least 10%
(exception: all 11 if a candidate gets 85% statewide)
3 uncommitted

Oklahoma Primary
25 statewide: proportional among candidates with at least 15%
(exception: all 25 if a candidate gets a majority)
5 districts x 3: 2 for first, 1 for second
(exceptions: all 3 if a candidate gets a majority; 1 each to the top three if none get at least 15%)
3 uncommitted

Virginia Primary
13 statewide: proportional among candidates with at least 15%
(exception: all 13 if a candidate gets a majority)
11 districts x 3: Winner Take All
3 uncommitted

[Barkis_is_Willin]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

So in what way is Huntsman the most conservative candidate that Kasich is not?

Well, first of all I said “arguably” most conservative and second, the main reason he got labeled a moderate is because he was an Obama appointed ambassador to China. But if you looked at his grades as governor of Utah, he was a top 5 conservative governor. He was more fiscally conservative than others in 2012 and advocated small government as much as anyone except maybe Ron Paul.

[BrainGlutton]

@BobLibDem

I can’t argue with that. I’m not counting Carson out quite yet because his voters are REALLY low information voters and quite immune to facts and logic.

I’m afraid it is exactly that bad.

A new Pew Research Center study helps explain why Trump and Carson and even Fiorina have surged in the polls despite lying mercilessly. The simple answer is that most Americans don’t trust the media, and this is particularly true among conservatives. 65 percent of Americans say the media has a “negative effect” on the country (In 2010, the number was 57 percent).

Republicans, predictably, are far more skeptical of the media than Democrats. 82 percent of conservatives say the news media is unreliable and bad for the country. A recent Gallup poll confirms the Pew findings. According to the Gallup data, “only 32 percent of Republicans said they have confidence in the news media – compared to 55 percent of Democrats.”

The net result of all this is that the truth really doesn’t matter. For conservatives, the media is the enemy, and nothing they report is reliable, especially if it contradicts popular narratives. This means Republican candidates pay virtually no price for stretching the truth or lying outright.

[Quartz]

@BrainGlutton

I’m afraid it is exactly that bad.

Umm… isn’t [noparse]Salon.com[/noparse] an outright liberal / Democrat site? Therefore is not its report is going to be perceived to be biased by non-liberals and Republicans?

Best forked to another thread.

[RTFirefly]

New national Q-Poll out: Trump 27, Rubio 17, Cruz, Carson 16, Bush 5, Fiorina 3, everyone else 2 or less.

Carson’s support is gradually declining, and AFAICT there’s no reason to think it won’t continue to do so. So a 3-way race is shaping up between Trump, Rubio, and Cruz. Jeb’s gradually fading from sight, and everyone else besides Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Carson, and Jeb is totally irrelevant at this point.

The next Iowa and NH polls should be interesting, to see how the rise of Rubio’s and Cruz’ support nationally gets reflected in the polls for those two states. The most natural expectation will be that both will gain in both states, but Cruz more substantially in Iowa and more modestly in NH, with the reverse being true for Rubio.

[septimus]

Would it be fun for Dopers to rank which GOP candidate they’d most like to see in the White House? (Don’t just vote for Carson, thinking that’s the best way to guarantee Democratic victory; for the purpose of this poll assume the GOP will win in November.) My rankings would be:

Christie

Kasich
Bush

Huckabee
Paul
Trump

Cruz
Rubio
Carson

(I’m not rooting for any of these gentlemen, but I think Christie might be the least bad, with Kasich nosing out Jeb! for 2nd. There are many ways a Trump Presidency could go very bad, but I’d still prefer that experiment to any of the three worst clowns.)

[adaher]

Kasich
Christie
Rubio
Huckabee
Bush
Cruz
Carson
Trump
Fiorina

[Dr.Drake]

@septimus

Would it be fun for Dopers to rank which GOP candidate they’d most like to see in the White House?

Red = I predict they’ll be out by March 2nd.

Pataki
Christie
Gilmore
Bush
Graham[…]The least insane, anyway.

Rubio
Trump
Fiorina[…]People who could probably be reined in on the job.

Paul
Carson[…]Paul would probably do less harm than some, and I suspect Carson could be managed senile-Reagan style.

Kasich
Huckabee
Cruz
Santorum[…]Off the charts nuts for a variety of reasons, though mostly religious.

[RTFirefly]

@septimus

Would it be fun for Dopers to rank which GOP candidate they’d most like to see in the White House?

No, not really. With the possible exception of Pataki, whose chances are so negligible that he’s not worth learning about, any of these guys in the White House would be a far greater disaster than people generally realize. I’m not gonna split hairs on whether I’d rather survive an earthquake or a tsunami.

You look at the things that the GOP House has tried to do in recent years - repealing Obamacare, gutting Medicaid, voucherizing Medicare, the Paul Ryan budgets, and so forth - and is any of these guys, in the White House, going to hold them back? The moment Kennedy, RBG, or Breyer retires, Roe is history. What little power unions have now will be undermined.

Assuming Hillary wins, she won’t be able to accomplish much. But her major accomplishment, the history books will record, will have been to preserve what we have while eight years’ worth of Fox News watchers and gullible elderly evangelical direct-mail targets die off, resulting in a somewhat more sane electorate come 2024, when we may hopefully resume making forward progress as a nation.

[septimus]

@RTFirefly

… any of these guys in the White House would be a far greater disaster than people generally realize. I’m not gonna split hairs on whether I’d rather survive an earthquake or a tsunami.

You look at the things that the GOP House has tried to do in recent years - repealing Obamacare, gutting Medicaid, voucherizing Medicare, the Paul Ryan budgets, and so forth - and is any of these guys, in the White House, going to hold them back?

One could argue that a GOP President would have a much better chance than Hillary to rein in a GOP House gone wild.

While I tend to view U.S. politics as almost a Good -vs- Evil show, I don’t think the contest divides strictly on party lines (though it almost does). Increasingly billionaires are donating to conservative Democrats, while candidates like Paul, Trump, or even Christie do not get biggest bucks. We might agree that Ted Cruz is little more than an Ann Coulter with a penis, but don’t you think Paul or Christie are basically sincere?

Don’t misunderstand me. I’ll be very distressed if any Republican takes the White House. But I’d be much more despondent if somone like Walker or Cruz took it than someone like Christie or even Romney.

[BrainGlutton]

@Quartz

Umm… isn’t [noparse]Salon.com[/noparse] an outright liberal / Democrat site? Therefore is not its report is going to be perceived to be biased by non-liberals and Republicans?

Best forked to another thread.

Salon is simply reporting a study by the Pew Research Center, which I’ve never heard called biased.

[RTFirefly]

@septimus

One could argue that a GOP President would have a much better chance than Hillary to rein in a GOP House gone wild.

They would both have the same veto, and the Constitutional requirement that it takes a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress to override a Presidential veto.

So they’d both have the same tool, when push came to shove. ’

But only one of them would have the motivation to use it. If it were clear that a Republican President was watering down Republican legislation, the howls from the base would change his tune fast, or turn him into a one-term President.

And with respect to nominations to the Supreme Court, there’s no reason to expect any GOP President to nominate anyone noticeably to the left of Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas.

While I tend to view U.S. politics as almost a Good -vs- Evil show, I don’t think the contest divides strictly on party lines (though it almost does). Increasingly billionaires are donating to conservative Democrats, while candidates like Paul, Trump, or even Christie do not get biggest bucks.

Tru dat, but we’re talking about whole different levels of payoffs. Big bucks to conservative Dems might get them to vote for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or to water down some new laws enabling new EPA regulations. Big bucks to the GOP gets them to vote for abolishing the EPA - assuming a financial incentive is even needed.

[QUOTE]

We might agree that Ted Cruz is little more than an Ann Coulter with a penis, but don’t you think Paul or Christie are basically sincere?

No. Paul goes back and forth between being a libertarian and being a religious conservative. How sincere is that? And Christie’s probably going to get indicted one of these days for felonious insincerity.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’ll be very distressed if any Republican takes the White House. But I’d be much more despondent if somone like Walker or Cruz took it than someone like Christie or even Romney.

Even in 2012, I’d have agreed with you that which Republican inhabited the White House would make a difference. But that time has gone. No Republican President would dare to keep the Republican Congress from doing everything it wants to do, and this fact is the great leveler among them. And by the time Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg retire, any Republican President will put Justices on the Supreme Court that would result in a 6-3 majority for taking us back to the Lochner era of jurisprudence.