Trump must not withdraw or be replaced by the RNC

[oft_wears_hats]

@RickJay

Ted Cruz may be a bad person, but, honestly, I think he could be trusted to not screw up NATO and start an avalanche of international chaos that results in a nuclear war.

Yeah, a few months ago, I thought Cruz would be hands down worse than Trump. But that was before Trump started saying very troubling things about nuclear weapons and honoring our NATO obligations. Still, these very things that make a hypothetical Trump presidency scarier than a Cruz presidency also make it much less likely that Trump will be elected. That doesn’t make the concept of a Cruz 2020 run less scary.

[Steve_MB]

@oft_wears_hats

Ted Cruz was very nearly the 2016 GOP nominee. When it looked like he was the last chance to stop Trump, GOP officials started endorsing him. If Cruz had landed the nomination, things would be much worse. He’s smart enough to cause way more domestic damage than Trump ever could. He’s strongly disliked in Congress, but not enough to prevent the GOP from getting in line behind him, which would vastly reduce the chances of down-ticket losses for the GOP. Cruz would have run a very tight campaign, and would have had an excellent chance of beating Hillary, due to her strong disapproval rating (deserved or not). This is terrifying because it could still happen in 2020.

The problem is that one of two things is going to happen:

1. The GOP Establishment will make changes to their primary/caucus and nomination procedures to prevent a similar fiasco. Given that these changes will be under the control of people who would not piss on Ted Cruz if he were on fire, they are bound to be stacked against him in various ways.

2. The GOP Establishment doesn’t change much of anything. The rush of candidates seeking to make their bones by challenging “crooked Hillary” (assuming that she is running for re-election) will require the 2016 clown car to be replaced by a clown bus or perhaps a clown TARDIS. One of the few things the multitude of candidates will agree upon is that Ted Cruz needs to be cut down before he can gain traction.

[CarnalK]

I don’t know what procedures they might employ to stack it against Cruz. Super delegates of some kind seems the most obvious but I wonder about the optics of mimicking the most criticized aspect of the Democrats’ process.

[Anny_Middon]

@asahi

This is 100 percent correct - I couldn’t have worded it better. They just don’t learn. They don’t learn because they don’t live in a world based on facts; they are governed by their own intuitions, religions, superstitions, and other fuzzy notions. Even among those who aren’t particularly religious, they reject science because they don’t want to give up their off-road vehicles or pay more in taxes.

As you say, they’re heavily invested into these ideas. They have developed friendships and professional relationships based on bonds with like-minded people. They’re not going back until a majority of people in this country take over and push them aside. I don’t know when that will be. But I strongly suspect we’re in for a long, rough ride until that happens, no matter who’s president.

Actually, I think there’s another way.

1. Create lots of good-paying jobs that don’t require much if any post-secondary school education. IMO many of these will be jobs to improve our infrastructure, which sorely needs improvement.

2. Get the Republicans to shut the fuck up about Obamacare, and actively work to make it better.

3. Do whatever is needed to improve our educational system. (I readily admit that I don’t know what this is – but far too many people in this country graduate high school without the basic skills needed to be successful adults.) Do a better job of figuring out what jobs will be needed in the next ten years and establish free or inexpensive community college programs to train people for those jobs.

In other words, take away the economic basis for the Trump supporters’ rage. People who are busy living the American dream and who see a way for their kids to do better than they have done are people who are too busy to revolt.

(The cynic in me asks if this is really all that different from “bread and circuses.” So be it.)

[Northern_Piper]

@RickJay

Ted Cruz may be a bad person, but, honestly, I think he could be trusted to not screw up NATO and start an avalanche of international chaos that results in a nuclear war.

True, but he’s shown that he’s quite willing to lead the United States to the brink of fiscal default for short-term political gain, thereby trashing the good credit of the US painstakingly built up over two centuries.

Not as serious as nuclear war, I concede; but still extremely problematic for the US and world economies.

[asahi]

@coremelt

Maybe I’m just too optimistic but I think that a solid convincing defeat in November will close the door to the fascist path to power in the US for at least 20 years. Trump supporters make a lot of noise, but really the core group of supporters are less than 20 percent of the eligible voting population. That’s disturbing on its own, but it’s not enough for them to gain power.

Consider this: on the Republican side, the two most popular candidates were Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who has also made vile comments about Muslims and liberals himself. Together they dominated the rest of the field.

Even if Trump implodes, he will still probably get 33 percent of the vote at worst, and most estimates I’ve seen have him getting closer to 40 percent. I think it’s getting close to the point of no return but he came into this week with a ceiling possibly as high as 45 percent. He might not get there now but that’s only because he has made himself look almost like the political version of a right wing authoritarian Borat.

Someone like Ted Cruz, on the other, with more polish and more strategic thinking, could accomplish a lot more.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

At some point pretty soon this becomes academic. If they haven’t already started doing so, states will start printing up their ballots. Trump dropping out (or being lured out by Sheldon Adelson) means the replacement will have to be a write-in.

[DigitalC]

@asahi

No, I don’t think it’ll discourage them at all. Trump will most likely lose because he is an uncontrollable buffoon, and even some people who hate Hillary to her core are now having serious reservations about his mental state and might end up voting Johnson instead or simply sit this one out and go down the ballot.

But the damage is already done, in my view. Trump’s campaign has already demonstrated that a more cunning, calculating, and self-disciplined demagogue, like Ted Cruz for instance, could build a movement and make fascism the next big thing in American politics. There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that Donald Trump has proven that fascism can be democratically supported in this country, regardless of the outcome in November.

In fact, I could see a scenario in which Hillary Clinton could win but still have extreme difficulty governing effectively. We could have an election in which people don’t vote for Trump but are nevertheless inspired to come out and vote down-ballot against Hillary, thereby preserving a more partisan and extreme congress with a president they love to hate even more than Obama.

I think what Donald Trump has shown is that the only parts of the GOP platform the base cares about are the xenophobic and racist ones, the rest of it doesn’t matter one bit. They don’t even care all that much about the anti gay stuff.

[asahi]

@DigitalC

I think what Donald Trump has shown is that the only parts of the GOP platform the base cares about are the xenophobic and racist ones, the rest of it doesn’t matter one bit. They don’t even care all that much about the anti gay stuff.

It’s white christian nationalism. There’s the xenophobia, the Bible, and the belief in American exceptionalism and supremacy. Some aspects appeal to certain people more than others, but those are the binds that tie.

[DinoR]

@CarnalK

I don’t know what procedures they might employ to stack it against Cruz. Super delegates of some kind seems the most obvious but I wonder about the optics of mimicking the most criticized aspect of the Democrats’ process.

Tweaking the method of allocating delegates to states is one tool. Neither party assigns them solely on state population.

The there’s the overall rules that guide states with regard to how they can choose to allocate their assigned delegates based on primary results.

If specific rules changes happens to disadvantage Cruz in the states where a lot of his support is …oooops.