Why Trump Will Win the GOP Nomination

[Jimmy Higgins]

Bad news, no one cares that she voted for it. It isn't going to hurt her.

There is an onslaught of advertising that goes on before these primaries.

We will know when it is clear to people that one candidate supported the invasion and the other opposed it.

Your wishful thinking is no better than a, gasp, Rand Paul supporter.

What you call wishful, I call pragmatic. There is a huge difference. Like Bill Maher says, 'I'm ready for a Clinton Presidency. I'm not excited about it, but I'm ready.'

 

[ksen]

Which means more of the same under Hilary. Wishy washy policies, and America going further down the gurgler of appeasement to Islam and hundreds of thousands of migrants, which there will be hundreds if not thousands of radicals to cause havoc in the next decades.

If that's what Hillary wants then that's what you'll get. She'll be in charge a year from now and can crush freedom and goodness as she sees fit.

thank god

 

[funinspace]

If that's what Hillary wants then that's what you'll get. She'll be in charge a year from now and can crush freedom and goodness as she sees fit.

thank god

Yup...Carson thinks America will be toast as well I know so shocking...
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/ben-carson-america-we-know-it-gone-if-hillary-clinton-pick-next-supreme-court-justices

“That would guarantee Hillary’s victory,” Carson said of a third-party bid. “If we get another progressive president and they get two or three Supreme Court picks, America as we know it is gone.”

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, that's good news. America as Carson knows it is a place we can do without.

 

[SLD]

38% of hard core Republican likely primary voters.

So about 15%, maybe less, of likely voters.

But we're talking about the primary, not the general election. The 38% is a large lead by any measure.

The way I see it is that the Republican rank and file was persuaded in 2012 to back Romney even though they didn't like him or really want him. His abject failure as a candidate was proof to them that they shouldn't have bothered supporting him. Now they will have their candidate and fuck the establishment. Trump will win the nomination.

As for the general election, absent a black swan for Hillary (possibly her health) I see her winning the key battle ground states and getting a large electoral vote majority to take her into the White House.

SLD

 

[braces_for_impact]

I still have hopes for Bernie, but whether it's Bernie or Hillary, Trump will be stomped into a grease spot in the debates. All Trump has had to face so far are kid glove criticism by his own party, who are too afraid of offending his many followers to really, truly attack him. This will not be a factor in the general debates, and either Democratic candidate will not only attack with full force, they will show just how ignorant Trump is about the the office he seeks to fill. He will look like a floundering buffoon, will fall back on his one liners and insults, which will cause his base to applaud, but will have very negative effects on everyone else. The Donald is too narcissistic and egotistical to do any actual learning or research, and so will end up looking like a dunce in the corner of the room.

 

[untermensche]

There is an onslaught of advertising that goes on before these primaries.

We will know when it is clear to people that one candidate supported the invasion and the other opposed it.

Your wishful thinking is no better than a, gasp, Rand Paul supporter.

What you call wishful, I call pragmatic. There is a huge difference. Like Bill Maher says, 'I'm ready for a Clinton Presidency. I'm not excited about it, but I'm ready.'

Bill Maher's opinions don't impress me.

What you call pragmatic I call a guess.

And if Bernie can win New Hampshire, which looks very possible, I am guessing things will change.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What you call wishful, I call pragmatic. There is a huge difference. Like Bill Maher says, 'I'm ready for a Clinton Presidency. I'm not excited about it, but I'm ready.'

Bill Maher's opinions don't impress me.

What you call pragmatic I call a guess.

And if Bernie can win New Hampshire, which looks very possible, I am guessing things will change.

Why? He is from Vermont. Winning New Hampshire wouldn't be a massive coup. Winning South Carolina would. Sanders will get a good deal of delegates, but Clinton won the inauguration for the Presidency in her last testimony to Congress. Accept it, move on and try to figure out how in the world a liberal agenda can be pushed with her as President.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Bill Maher's opinions don't impress me.

What you call pragmatic I call a guess.

And if Bernie can win New Hampshire, which looks very possible, I am guessing things will change.

Why? He is from Vermont. Winning New Hampshire wouldn't be a massive coup. Winning South Carolina would. Sanders will get a good deal of delegates, but Clinton won the inauguration for the Presidency in her last testimony to Congress. Accept it, move on and try to figure out how in the world a liberal agenda can be pushed with her as President.

I think it would be good for Sanders to win a couple of early states solely to make Clinton panic and have nightmares about 2008, so that she'll toss a few crumbs over to the left wing of the party in an attempt to pretend that she gives the slightest shit about their issues. If she only backs off of 2/3rds of them after being elected, that's still more than they'd get otherwise.

 

[untermensche]

Bill Maher's opinions don't impress me.

What you call pragmatic I call a guess.

And if Bernie can win New Hampshire, which looks very possible, I am guessing things will change.

Why? He is from Vermont. Winning New Hampshire wouldn't be a massive coup. Winning South Carolina would. Sanders will get a good deal of delegates, but Clinton won the inauguration for the Presidency in her last testimony to Congress. Accept it, move on and try to figure out how in the world a liberal agenda can be pushed with her as President.

To win South Carolina the voters of South Carolina first have to know who he is and how he is different from Clinton.

South Carolina is 2 weeks after New Hampshire, I doubt Sanders has the resources to put much there until after New Hampshire.

What we are probably seeing is name recognition at this point in places like South Carolina, little else.

 

[Rhea]

I still have hopes for Bernie, but whether it's Bernie or Hillary, Trump will be stomped into a grease spot in the debates. All Trump has had to face so far are kid glove criticism by his own party, who are too afraid of offending his many followers to really, truly attack him. This will not be a factor in the general debates, and either Democratic candidate will not only attack with full force, they will show just how ignorant Trump is about the the office he seeks to fill. He will look like a floundering buffoon, will fall back on his one liners and insults, which will cause his base to applaud, but will have very negative effects on everyone else. The Donald is too narcissistic and egotistical to do any actual learning or research, and so will end up looking like a dunce in the corner of the room.

And it is the GOP juggling this set of burning knives that is fun to watch. The GOP establish knows exactly how out of his depth Trump would be in the general. They've seen that while he garners the entire nutjob vote right now, the rest of the field would not vote for him if he were the nominee. They know that. And it's interesting to watch what they do about it.

The ONLY reason Trump leads is that the trump-hating majority of the GOP is fractured. The GOP needs to consolidate. Hmmm. How will they do it. That's the thing to watch.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dear-media-stop-freaking-out-about-donald-trumps-polls/

and from back in the summer: Trump's "unfavorable" is yuuuge!
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/donald-trump-is-the-nickelback-of-gop-candidates/

edited for more germane stats:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187607/donald-trump-known-not-liked.aspx

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The 2016 presidential candidates who are the most familiar to U.S. adults -- Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush -- also rank among the least-liked, in terms of their unfavorable rating exceeding their favorable rating. Trump vies with Clinton as the race's best-known candidate, but he is by far the least-liked of the field, with 59% viewing him unfavorably and 32% favorably, yielding a net favorable score of -27. [compared to Clinton's -4]

 

[braces_for_impact]

Originally posted by Rhea

The ONLY reason Trump leads is that the trump-hating majority of the GOP is fractured. The GOP needs to consolidate. Hmmm. How will they do it. That's the thing to watch.

Yes, you're right. It has been fun watching the party seriously fall apart at the seams, and now I really cannot see how they're going to reunite this mess. The delicious part is that they created this monster, and damn if it hasn't come and seriously bit them in the ass, with no end in sight. It will be interesting to see the fallout.

It's incredibly depressing though, how many racists have come out of the woodwork because of Trump. Racist organizations and websites are swelling, they are feeling emboldened, and starting to act out publicly and without shame.

 

[Rhea]

It's incredibly depressing though, how many racists have come out of the woodwork because of Trump. Racist organizations and websites are swelling, they are feeling emboldened, and starting to act out publicly and without shame.

Yeah, that's true. That is depressing.

 

[Rhea]

I googles this and clicked on "images" I may eb stuck here for a while...

trump gop cartoon

- - - Updated - - -

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Donald Trump is a textbook example of an ideological moderate

I post this with some humor. Ever since 1971 when the Libertarian Party was founded we've been warning that this country was going in the wrong direction. Not just one particular party, but the country. Both parties have done their part to ruin political discourse. And the end result is a Trump.

Donald Trump is one of the most extreme presidential candidates to gain widespread support in contemporary American politics. Despite championing policies like the end of birthright citizenship, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and a registry of Muslims living in the United States, Trump has consistently polled atop the Republican field since July. A popular perspective thus attributes Trump’s success to a “right wing fringe” of GOP voters.

But this conventional wisdom misses something important: Trump meets the textbook definition of an ideological moderate.

Trump has the exact “moderate” qualities that many pundits and political reformers yearn for in politicians: Many of Trump’s positions spurn party orthodoxy, yet are popular among voters. And like most voters — but unlike most party politicians — his positions don’t consistently hew to a familiar left-right philosophy.

At Tuesday night’s debate, for example, Trump flanked the Republican party on the right and left — calling for killing civilians and saying the Iraq war was a mistake because it diverted money from domestic spending priorities. CrowdPAC thus lists Trump as far more moderate than the other Republican candidates.

How can Trump be both a moderate and an extremist? Our research has shown why support for extreme policies and so-called “ideological moderation” often go together — people who appear “moderate” on a left-right ideological spectrum often have extreme views on individual issues.

Here’s how this works: Measures of voters’ left-right “ideology” primarily capture the frequency with which their opinions fall on the liberal or conservative side on different issues. Many Americans’ policy opinions are mixed bags of liberal and conservative positions, earning them the distinction of being called “ideological moderates.” Just like Trump.

But, as Trump shows, holding ideologically mixed positions across issues, which political scientists call “ideological moderation,” doesn’t guarantee that those individual policy views are moderate at all. Donald Trump — and, we will show, his supporters — thus illustrates an important lesson: We should not confuse moderation in the general ideological sense with moderation on actual issues.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Does anyone define moderation in that way? Just because he has extremes on the right and left doesn't mean he ends up in the middle. That's like putting Bill Gates in a room with a homeless guy and saying you've solved income inequality because everyone there is, on average, a billionaire.

Trump is an extremist freak. The fact that he freaks out in odd and random directions doesn't make him less of an extremist freak.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I post this with some humor.

It does belong on the funny pages.

 

[Sarpedon]

I don't think that Trump really tops out at 33% of likely republicans. He's benefited as much as Cruz from the drop in Carson's fortunes.

I think the racist and religious factions of the republican party comprise about 60%-66% of the total, currently divided between Trump, Carson and Cruz. I think that is the ceiling for Trump, provided the other two are pushed out the way. The business and warhawk factions, "the so-called" establishment, comprise the rest. It is pretty clear that they are in the minority. For years they provided the brains of the party, while the other two provided the heft. Now however, they are the victims of their own strategy. By encouraging republicans to be suspicious of 'elite experts' and telling them that compromise is wrong and that someone is 'either for you or against you,' they have set up the situation where they have lost control over the bulk of their party, which regards them as the very sort of elite, compromising RINOs that they themselves trained the masses to be suspicious of.

I'm becoming convinced that labels such as 'moderate' simply don't apply. Sure, Trump has a variety of views that don't square with certain 'conservative' voter preferences, yet those same 'conservative' voters back him. This seeming contradiction has baffled a large number of so-called pundits, who can't understand how their lazy, short hand categories have misled them. It shows that these terms are useless. When one ceases to think of such terms as 'moderate,' 'liberal,' and 'conservative,' and instead look at the various voting blocs that comprise the parties, everything becomes clearer.

 

[untermensche]

The American political "center" has shifted to the right so rapidly all kinds of extreme positions, like purely anti-Muslim positions, look moderate and moderate positions, like helping people in desperation, look to come from the extreme left.

 

[iolo]

The American political "center" has shifted to the right so rapidly all kinds of extreme positions, like purely anti-Muslim positions, look moderate and moderate positions, like helping people in desperation, look to come from the extreme left.

Happening everywhere. Mr Corbyn, recently elected fuhrer of the Labour Party is constantly described as 'hard left', though his opinions are just about average for the time before the tories took over the party under bliar. Most twentieth-century tories would be hard left by the standards of Murdoch and the mugs.