Pretty much as it says in the title. Please limit it to who you want to win; not who you think will win.
I’m limiting it to the top three in the current polls - Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.
By the by, this is a private poll, but feel free to expand - not that anyone could stop this bunch from doing so!
…and I see that I’ve managed to bugger up my own vote. Mine should have been I lean left and would want Rubio, not right. :smack: I’m finding him the least scary of the three.
I don’t know enough about Rubio to vote yet, but I’m just going to say this: If anyone voted for “I lean left and want Trump” because you really wish the United States had one party elections like some banana republic and you think that steamrolling Trump’s the next best thing, you suck.
I chose Cruz, but more in a ‘pox on my enemies’ sense. Of the major and minor GOP candidates remaining, the only one I’d actually trust with the job of President is Kasich.
I wouldn’t want him to be President either, because he’s still far closer to Cruz ideologically than to even the most centrist Dem, but at least he’d be competent.
If this is how you’re interested in framing the discussion:
Then why this?
You’ve basically thrown “want” out the window despite “want” being the self-identified focus of the OP.
In this election cycle, there isn’t a Republican running who I would vote for in the general election but Rand Paul is the candidate I’d most want to win the nomination because I think the debates in the Fall between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders (who I most want to win the Democratic nomination) could significantly change the perennial political talking points and get average voters considering more than just the same handful of the same old same old issues in deciding how to cast their votes.
But I can’t choose Rand Paul in this poll because he’s not one of the three candidates that the OP has decided will probably win. Which is fine, really, the OP can lay out any criteria or place any limits as deemed fit by OP Wisdom. It just seems odd to limit the choices to likely winners then instruct Thread participants not to base their choices on the likely winners.
Trump, because it’s time to pay the piper. The GOP has been able to get away with its dog whistles for too long, and now it’s time for some dog to bite it square in the ass and rip off a healthy chunk. If you want to eat with the Devil, you must use a long spoon, and the GOP’s spoons have gotten shorter and shorter.
I want a sane multiple party system (2 sane parties are better than 1, 3 are better than 2, etc.), and I think a Trump nomination is more likely to help lead to that then the other candidates.
I think they’re spooning with the Devil at this point. 
I want the GOP to be the party I thought it was when I was a kid: The boring, somewhat unimaginative party devoted to stewardship of all things, moderating progressive impulses and allowing measured, cautious change.
Of course, I was born in 1984, by which point the GOP had already become the party of Reagan and the Southern Strategy and Grover Norquist, so my childhood impression was never very accurate, but if we can convince the GOP that it has to dump the reactionary idiots in order to win again, maybe the GOP will become the party I imagined it was, and the party this country needs. Trump being defeated in 50 states is the quickest way onto that path.
Rubio. Of the three options given, he might not be the easiest for Clinton or Sanders to beat, but he is the least-scariest if he should win.
Given that they, in my view, a) are among the most colossal assholes in recent memory and b) unabashedly pander to the assholishly inclined of our society, I simply cannot agree to reward Trump or Cruz with a nomination.
I’m not exactly in love with Rubio either, but he’s the only other choice in the poll, so there it is.
Trump narrowly over Cruz. Trump is more malleable than Cruz, who actually believes the manure that spews from his mouth. So while both would be easily beaten, Trump might be the least dangerous of the two should he win. Sure, Rubio is more qualified than either, but that little squirt has the best chance to beat Hillary of the three.
I’m generally Republican and Rubio is the only one of the three I could tolerate voting for. If Cruz or Trump is nominated, I’ll vote for the other side.
Overall, I’m leaning more Bush or Kasich, but there’s nobody in that field that particularly excites me.
Not quite sure what you’re getting at, but since it definitely doesn’t apply to me, I guess it’s none of my beeswax.
I DO want Trump to represent the Republican Party in November, largely because I hope that coattails can be used for losing seats in the HoR and Senate (and hell, throw in some governorships, too), and the additional hope that Trump has long ones.
What if you find TRUMP superior (as I do) compared to any of the other Republican candidates on the issues? Not to mention that prosperous First World liberal democracies had de facto one party systems for long periods of time (see Sweden and her Social Democratic Party or LDP’s dominance in Japan).
Wanting to steamroll Trump has nothing to do with wanting “one party elections.” It’s just that we only have one plausible party right now. The question is not “who do you want to be POTUS,” it’s “who do you want to be the candidate?”
H’m. I did decide to limit it, as you say, to those I felt had any chance at all of winning the nomination. Partially laziness, mostly that putting in Kasich, Paul, or O’Malley seemed to me the same as putting in Lieberman or Superman. They’re not going to win, as best I can tell, shy of a bomb attack at a debate wiping out the top contenders, so why even consider them?
You are, of course, welcome to put up your own polls. Just be sure to add in Aquaman - poor guy gets no love at all! 
Trump purely for entertainment value. And it may lead to actual reforms if the GOP realises that if they don’t reform the system, repeats of Trump who go even further to appease the crazies are the most likely outcome.