I disagree with how the question is worded of course but I don’t think you are wrong. The problem I see is there are too many non Trumps in the race. And people don’t understand that W was considered not conservative enough by many. The Republican leadership is risking a party split if they pull shenanigans. It’s better to lose the White House with Trump running than it is to lose the White House to because Trump ran as an independent.
Of course this is all dependent on him actually wanting the job. Which I am not convinced of.
I don’t know if Donald would want to be President but he knows he can’t have it.
He doesn’t want to be the Republican nominee either. When he fails to equal Goldwater’s 39% of 1964, Trump’s great publicity stunt would turn into a dismal joke and the man would become a laughing-stock, probably after decimating his financial empire in the vain hope of getting to 40%.
But he might love to be an independent candidate! He’d only need 19% to equal Perot’s 1992 vote.
Just 15% or 20% as independent could be seen as a victory, contrasting with the ignominy of getting less than 40% as the GOP nominee. He’d be a phenomenon! Ratings for You’re Fired Part 2 would go through the roof! (Or would he rename the show You’re Waterboarded! ?)
And of course, Democrats would be eternally grateful if the Donald ran as an independent. He’d be a hero on both the left and the right. I’d not be surprised if there’s already whispering: (“I’ll finance your next big casino if you run as an independent, Donald.”)
Trump has two brick walls in his path, or, rather, one brick wall which huts him in two separate ways: His actual favorability numbers objectively stink and therefore he isn’t likely to get endorsements or any nontrivial number of votes. He could find a way to run a strong campaign without endorsements. He won’t be able to Trump his way around the fact a significant number of Republicans think he’s a dangerous lunatic.
Here, I disagree with you, and not just on the spelling of “mendacious” : There’s no way in Hell any of the GOP establishment backs Trump. It would be financial and political suicide. Even if they could get some benefits from defection, they’d be punished by the rest of the establishment.
Heck, I’d regard a brokered GOP convention as Christmas 2016 come early. It would be epochal. Textbooks would point to it as the definitive end of the current Party System (we’re on the sixth or fifth, depending on how you count) and those kinds of bright-line divisions between eras don’t come around very often. I just think the current GOP is still strong enough to prevent it from happening, even if it means Trump runs as an independent and Clinton wins in a landslide.
People have been saying this, but what would replace the Republican Party? The Freedom Party, the One America Party (like the Fox News wannabe), the Traditional Party? Dead serious: names rally things, and just coming up with a name for a new party would be hard. Then, what about House, Senate, and local party apparatuses and offices?
I think Carson’s chances for taking Iowa have come and gone, as Carson’s supporters continue drifting over to Cruz. If Cruz takes Iowa and Trump takes NH, I see Rubio basically getting squeezed out in the early going, and Cruz solidly defeating Trump in those SEC states on Super Tuesday.
Gotta agree with you: the GOP will still be a major party, even after a brokered convention that throws the nomination to Romney. Such an outcome would make the base even madder than ever at the Establishment, and Cruz or some similar figure would sweep to the nomination in 2020. Maybe what’s left of the sane wing of the GOP would defect, but it’s already a shrinking wing, and FOX News and a thousand Rush Limbaugh wannabes on talk radio would rally around the GOP.
It might be clearly a minority party after such a sequence of events, but certainly larger and stronger than it was after the Goldwater loss in 1964. If it didn’t break up then, it’s not going to break up now, either.
Parties usually survive Party Systems. What changes when a Party System ends is which groups are aligned under which banner: The end of a Party System is marked by large-scale realignments, such that the existing parties get different constituencies and, therefore, different philosophies.
This was seen most drastically at the end of WWII, when the Civil Rights movement became a Democratic cause and forced the old Southern Democrats to align with the Republicans. The modern Democratic Party is therefore only loosely related to the Democrats of the 1920s and 1930s, as the Republican Party absorbed its most racist elements due to the Southern Strategy.
It’s possible that the GOP brand will be so tarnished that the Republican Party will straight-up cease to exist. That, however, is much rarer than Party Systems ending. The last time a major party died was when the Whigs self-destructed over the issue of slavery immediately prior to the Civil War.
Come to think of it, here’s why Trump is saying this crazy shit: because everyone has been suspecting that sooner or later, a mass effort to dislodge him would happen but no one knew when. It was a staring contest. Trump wanted to get them to blink so he could make his 3rd party threat long enough to stop the GOP from actually doing it, or to blunt it long enough before Iowa to recover. Makes sense: this guy is calculating and has shown himself to be superlative at it.
when he becomes president it will spark international revolution, where all these useless current politicians are thrown out and replaced with non politicians. everyone likes him because he isn’t a politician like all the other candidates. people hate politicians, and trumps not one.
The Kasich ad is his campaign’s way of saying “screw it, we’re out.” As mentioned above, he’s not fighting for Trump’s supporters. He merely despises the idea of Trump as the Republican nominee so much that he’s trying to drag him along for the ride.
Everyone? Are you sure? Last I saw, only 1 in 3 Republicans likes him. I’m betting the independents and Democrats who like him are somewhat less than that.
I suspect that it’s also a favor from Kasich to the GOP Party Establishment (which wants Trump to go away, or at least lay off the blatantly racist and fascist rhetoric, but can’t get its own fingerprints on the push lest Trump get his back up to the point of launching an independent campaign).
Read it folks, this is why Trump continues to defy reality.
It doesn’t matter that he’s a liar, a demogogue and a hypocrite. It doesn’t matter that if Trump actually tries to build a wall, Mexico would simply say, “Screw you. Pay for your own damn wall!” It doesn’t matter that he can’t overturn the 14th Amendment just because the idea sounds good to him.
Nope, the new reality is that more and more people couldn’t care less about facts, or reality, or what the Constitution actually says. They’re convinced that bullying is genuine authority and that being rich somehow automatically means you can’t also be full of shit.
The president doesn’t need to overturn law or restrictions the president doesn’t like. The president can choose to not enforce it. A sanctuary country if you will.
It also doesn’t matter, of course, that he’s a politician. You can’t run for President without being a politician, by definition.
As for Kasich’s ad, I suspect that his primary motivation right now is to make sure Trump isn’t elected. I suspect that if Trump were to actually get the Republican nomination, he’d even go so far as to endorse the Democrat. I might disagree with Kasich on a heck of a lot of issues, but I think he really does care about doing what’s best for the people, and he’s smart enough to know that a Trump presidency would be disastrous for everyone.
I can’t remember another candidate for President who argued that people born in the U.S. weren’t American citizens. Well, Pat Buchanan, maybe. He received 0.43% of the popular vote as a 3rd party candidate in 2000.
Yes, and Trump supporters love to eat shit. They think if they eat the shit of a rich guy like him, it will compensate for how insignificant they are. His candidacy is just an extension of his TV show.
: There’s no way in Hell any of the GOP establishment backs Trump. It would be financial and political suicide. Even if they could get some benefits from defection, they’d be punished by the rest of the establishment.