Like most conservatives, I have little use for Jeb Bush, but I’ve believed all along that he’s going to win the nomination, and if anything, I think Donald Trump cinches things for him.
Jeb was in trouble so long as there was a chance SOMEONE to his right could unify the many conservative factions that don’t want another country club moderate nominee. There were several candidates who MIGHT have been able to do that. Scott Walker looked for a while like he might be the guy.
But now? Scott Walker is fading. So are most of the other contenders. Why? In large part because Donald Trump has soaked up all the media attention, all the enthusiasm, and all the money they needed.
At this point, it looks to me as if Trump and Jeb will be the only guys left standing, and Jeb will get the nomination handily.
Well Trump has sucked the spotlight away from his opponents. If he can suck the spotlight away from them he can hinder the flow of money to his opponents too. The entire dynamic of the campaign has changed with Trump running.
Others who know more about campaign financing can confirm whether or not this is a plausible narrative.
I’ve actually been pondering ideas that I think are along the same lines as those in the OP, although derived in a slightly different way, suggesting that the Trump candidacy might actually be the thing most likely to give us a moderate Republican nominee.
I tend to view political positioning as a linear spectrum with candidates setting themselves down at one point in the spectrum and voters go to the candidate that is closest to their location on the spectrum.
From this point of view the best place for a candidate to put himself is at the center of mass of the voter pool. The problem that Republicans have been having in the past is that the Primary voter pool is quite to the right of the general election voter pool. If Romney moved too close to the center than another candidate could position himself just to Romney’s right, and pick him off in the Primary.
However now we have Trump squatting down at the far (crazy) right of the spectrum. There is no point in trying to contend for those votes, Trump’s going to get them. You can’t out crazy Trump without losing a sizable portion of the non-crazy Republicans. This effectively puts them out of play. With the effect of moving the Republican primary center of mass significantly towards the center. Thus the winning Republican could be the one that appeals to the moderate republicans as well as a portion of those on the non-far right.
Unfortunately for them, many of the candidates have gotten so used to sucking up the the extremists that they fail to realize this and keep trying to pander to the Trump voters, but Bush for the most part hasn’t so he might be the one to pull it off.
It might work out to Kasich’s benefit if there’s any substance to last weeks statements from his supporting super PAC.
The story mentions some other NH endorsements, which is a big early state for both of them as moderates. Bush remains in a three stooges slap fight with Trump. Meanwhile Kasich is plugging away on message and mostly outside the fray. Pataki as a moderate isn’t getting any traction. Chrisite, also in the moderate space, doesn’t seem to be building much and has his bridge issue. The quarterly fundraising filings at the end of Sept should be interesting.
From what I’ve seen, Kasich has been the one to benefit most from the Trump-factor. Bush’s inability to get the spotlight back from Trump and his repeated gaffes show what a weak candidate he actually is, in my opinion. He was supposed to be the “inevitable” candidate in much the way Hillary is seen to be for the Democrats. Honestly, I think he is in greater jeopardy than Hillary is at this point.
Kasich on the other hand was facing little to no expectations so every bit of ground he gains and exposure he gets is a victory for him.
And the average honest-to-goodness grassroot Joe Teaparty will say “why should I give money to one of these weak losers, when I have a standardbearer in Trump who does not need my money”; or the Koch/Adelson types who could normally influence who stayed or left by strategically giving and witholding indirect independent support now have someone who could theoretically go face to face with them.
Besides Trump is being brilliant at NOT needing a campaign budget, by playing the media like a fiddle and getting abundant free coverage in the news and punditry shows/pages/sites. The number of minutes of airtime and column inches of newsprint he’s getting w/o having to pay for it is virtually unaffordable as paid advertising.
One would have thought that 2008 would have taught people a lesson about inevitability.
Jeb! was ostensibly *drafted *into the role as the great white hope of the established GOP for NOT having another frontrunner-of-the-week freakshow primary as in 2011-2012. They failed.
The problem with this sort of linear analysis is that it’s too simplistic. Trump is a great example here: you pegged him as hogging the crazy right-wing end of the spectrum, but there’s really only two reasons for that: he is temperamentally extreme, and his stated opinions on immigration actually are politically extreme. But where is he on flat taxes (against) or health care (he praised single payer) or affirmative action (for)? He’s the only candidate in the republican primary not to support winding down of entitlements. He’s not a traditional right-winger in many ways.
Furthermore, how about Huckabee? He’s very right-wing on social issues, but has been on record actually believing some of that Jesusy stuff about helping the poor that hurt him in past campaigns. So where does he rate right/left versus, say, Rand Paul?
Bush is in an interesting spot. He saw how Romney’s attempts to be “severely conservative” didn’t really help him that much in the Republican primary and hurt him in the general in 2012. So he’s attempting to not take the bait. But at the same time, he’s showing over and over again that he’s pretty terrible at this campaigning stuff, so he’s losing votes from people whose support was contingent on thinking he was the one who could beat Hillary while not gaining anything from the base.
But I don’t know who else could pick up the ball as Bush fumbles it. Kasich is an obvious guess, but he’s in danger of being pigeon-holed as a moderate, which is a death-knell in the Republican Primary (see Huntsman, Jon.) He’ll need to pivot quickly to gain conservative cred, but that space is pretty well occupied. It’ll definitely be interesting to watch play out.
My guess, coming back to the title of the thread, is that it is still Bush’s nomination to lose, and Trump has helped so far. His (Bush’s, that is) name recognition is high, he’s generally well liked and seen as competent, Trump’s media share has provided him some shade during some of his gaffes, and he still has tons of money. But he’s going to have to be ready by the time the spotlight turns back around to him.
Trump is going to do everything he can to cut down Bush in the primaries. I guess Bush can still win the nomination if Trump self destructs soon enough, but he’s been hurt bad by Trump. Once Teh Donald is out of the race the other candidates will use Trump’s playbook against Jeb. If Bush eventually gets the nomination anyway I guess there’s some chance Trump will endorse Bush on the basis that he hates the Democratic nominee even more, but I have my doubts.
Yes, you’re right, nothing is ever simple in real life. After posting, I found a 538 analysisthat shows that Trump seems to actually have pretty broad support across the spectrum of conservatives, a result that I found highly surprising, and which totally destroys the perfectly linear way of thinking about things. That said, I still think that a strategy that leaves the Trump voters to Trump and concentrates on finding the n-dimensional center of mass of what’s left might be the best road to victory, since it has the additional advantage of putting you in a stronger position for the general election.
Huntsman wasn’t particularly moderate either, but took that tack in the primary last cycle. I agree with you about Kasich, but between taking federal Medicaid expansion dollars and attending a gay wedding, he seems to be angling for that role this time.
Who says they voted for Romney in large numbers during the primaries last cycle? Santorum and Gingrich combined to take just over a third of the votes cast in the 2012 primaries.
To quote Firesign, “He’s been up for a week…but he’s coming doooowwwn.”
Damn, I’m sorry I never thought of using that line in 2011.
But I don’t see how they failed this time! Trump’s been in the lead for a solid month and a half, and shows no sign of coming back to earth anytime soon. That’s a bit more than a week. New Q-poll has him at 28%, Carson at 12%, and nobody else above 7%. Not even Jeb.
Suppose the story of 2016 is the mirror image of 2012, where the moderates (by GOP standards) had their guy at or near the lead all the time, while the people looking for a True Believer to run on their behalf were divided because none of their candidates were particularly inspiring, even by their standards, when push came to shove.
This time the moderates, such as they are, have an unsatisfying choice between mediocre candidates, but the True Believers have found their rock star.
Part of the problem as mentioned earlier is that we’re at the point we’re giving “moderate” status to people who in 2008 would have been considered hardliners. The Powers That Be were betting on that this time around the “sensible viable” candidate(s) would clear the board early of the noise of the wannabes and be able to focus on hitting Hillary. Instead they got the “wrong” frontrunner who does have staying power, and nobody dares take him on frontally.
Sorry, I must have been distracted by something. Is there a consensus opinion floating around that the average h-t-g grassroot Joe Teapartys have enough money to even be noticed amid the Koch/Adelson types?
It wasn’t actually that Huntsman was moderate, so much as that he was non-partisan. He had extremely conservative views, but he was willing to work with politicians of any stripe to accomplish those views. Trump is the opposite: His views average out to moderate (though there are still some quite extreme ones in there), but he’s not willing to work with anyone on them.
