Wouldn’t Cruz or Pence be even worse? By 2020 the GOP will probably so crazy with Hillary hatred, they’ll pick and even bigger nut job than Trump.
The thread title asks who will be the GOP candidate, not win the presidency.
I don’t think its going to be Brownback. Even other conservatives are mocking him for Kansas, which is ironic because they’d do the exact same thing if they were in power.
That’s how they got Michael Steele
For my picks, I’d say Rubio’s a good bet only if he wins his Senate seat this year. But if he’s out of politics for 4 years due to a loss, I don’t see how he recovers his image or name recognition.
Cruz is a good bet too. He’ll win his seat again in Texas whenever its up for re-election and he’s already been setting the stage for 2020. All of his “vote your conscious” stuff and eventual support of Trump puts him in a position to get those disaffected Trump supporters and establishment types. Trump is going to lose big and take the Senate majority with him, there’s no way the establishment won’t reassert its power so whoever wins in 2020 won’t be able to use the same playbook and cater only to the racist alt-right crowd
I don’t know about Kasich. Capable or not, the man is still boring and uninspiring, unable to generate strong emotion in either direction. He’ll contend, but I don’t think he’ll win the nomination. The right wing will be so mad and fired up by 4 years of Clinton that they’ll want someone who’s more fire and brimstone than warm air and bricks.
Kasich will only run if he sees a market for his brand in 2020. But if there’s an opening for that type, he might have company. Huntsman would still love to be a savior for the GOP and he’s a lot more talented of a candidate.
The problem with Huntsman is that he’s more appealing to the wishy-washy middle than the GOP party faithful - he could potentially pick up undecided and blue-dog Democrats in a general election but he’ll never appeal to the Tea Partiers or Trumpistas in the primary so will never get through to the general.
Similar things were said about Clinton in 1992, that he was too right-wing for the party. But three terms out of the White House can focus the mind. The GOP base is of course much further in crazy territory, but also it’s a much surer thing. It really seems that the public wants a Republican, they just want a good one. If the nutcase base agrees to present the public with that candidate, then it’s pretty much a sure win.
How have you been enjoying the Romney Administration so far?
Romney wasn’t horrible, but he was no John Huntsman.
An argument that requires the nutcase base to be rational pretty much fails at the start. Crazy people don’t dial back on the crazy - they double down on it. That’s how we ended up with Trump. If the crazy people are still effectively running the party in four years, Trump may end up looking positively sane compared to who they pick next.
Then pretty soon there will be no functioning opposition party, leaving a vacuum that will either be filled by another party, or a dominant Democratic Party that is effectively two parties, as it once was: an urban, college educated faction vs a rural, overwhelmingly white, working class faction. Just the same shit, only under the Democratic Party banner instead of a real two party system.
Wouldn’t be the first time in US politics one of the two parties disintegrated and the remaining party split. Or the second, or the third.
It’s the natural order of things. These voters exist, and as long as they are in large enough numbers, someone will represent them. And if one party is so weak or ineffective that they can’t do it, they’ll figure out that they can get better results voting in the other party’s primaries instead. It’s not like voting in Democratic primaries would be a new experience for southerners especially.
I think what’s more likely though is that Republicans find a balance between top down leadership and the rabble. The democrats actually have a problem too, they are too top down these days and pretty much ignore their rabble. But that’s not healthy either in the long run. That’s how the GOP got where it is today. One day the political elite and business interests ran the party, and the next they didn’t. Democrats will experience the same fate if they don’t see the danger.
I agree that the Bernie-or-busters are a significant force within the Democratic Party but they don’t have the numbers that the Tea Party did or the Trump supporters do (acknowledging that the two GOP groups are different but overlap to some degree). And right now the BoBs are kept in check by the need for enough party solidarity to keep the Republican craziness from taking over the country. That’s how we ended up with Clinton.
Of course, if the GOP does fall apart to the point that it no longer poses a significant threat and the Democrats become dominant, I suspect (as you say) they will go totally Yugoslavia as the corporate centrists and the energized ideologues attempt to seize control and a period of acrimonious factionalism will occur.
But this isn’t happening by 2020.
The Bernie Bros are one possible faction that could cause trouble, but the thing about a top down organization like the Democratic party is that there won’t be just one pissed off faction. What happened to the GOP was that the Tea Party came first, and then the alt right. The Democrats have even more factions, any of whom could hijack the party if the base gets tired of being told to get in line behind the establishment’s chosen candidate.
If Clinton has a successful Presidency, then these problems go away for a decade or more. But if she struggles, even if it’s not her fault, there’s going to be a lot of discontent with the establishment.
After four hillaryears of lack of leadership, the Country will desperately need and want a strong, strict “law and order” President. Any Republican could run and win on that platform, but we haven’t seen the last of Cruz.
Clinton is whatever she needs to be to win the next election, which is why I have little doubt that she’ll be reelected if she gets into the White House. The public demanded law and order last time she was in the White House, and she was totally on board with it. She’ll throw any group under the bus that she has to for the sake of her career.
Funny how Hillary gets excoriated both for excessive loyalty and for a willingness to throw people under buses willy-nilly.
Well, maybe, if she starts a war…
Personal loyalty. I said “groups” under the bus, such as gays on gay marriage when she was running in 2008, blacks when she was selling the Clinton crime bill, that kind of thing. If the public is most concerned about law and order and it looks like it will cause problems for Democrats, she’ll be the law and order President, no problem.
I think its time we dispense with the notion that we need or want a strong opposition party in this country. California got a supermajority of Dems in office a few years ago and along with Jerry Brown, fixed our woeful budget problems and the state is better than ever. Our schools are getting funded, no more rolling blackouts, the economy’s booming, we have a budget surplus, our parks aren’t being shut down, and government isn’t furloughing workers or having a hiring freeze.
I think that’s the real fear of the GOP: if they don’t obstruct and pretend government doesn’t work, Democrats will show them what good government is and then the Republicans will be a thing of the past.
Jon Huntsman or Romney or Kasich will still have to go through the gauntlet that the is the GOP primaries. They will not be nominated. It’ll go to someone like Cruz who can gather the most angry voters and motivated voters after 4 years of Clinton but they’ll be defeated in the general election just like the last 3 elections (and yes, I’m counting 2016, its a foregone conclusion).
At this point, the GOP might as well return to no more primaries and just have the party bosses choose a nominee in a smoky room