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What is the Path Forward?
We all expected yesterday to be pretty awful, so let’s not spend too much time mourning today. I wish Rubio had dropped out before yesterday and proven himself to be the statesman that many of us believe he’s capable of being, but the job now is to find a way forward.
Kasich did those of us who are #NeverTrumpers a favor by winning Ohio, of course, but I think he’s going to be a thorn in our sides from here on out. He will divide our side’s vote and prevent Cruz from cleaning up. I can’t see him dropping out, however, even though there’s zero chance he’ll win enough delegates to secure the nomination. He surely hopes to be the compromise candidate at a brokered convention, but he must know that’s highly unlikely, because even in what would be a best-case scenario for him, he won’t win very many delegates. More likely, he hopes to play kingmaker and score the veep slot.
The interesting thing is that since Kasich has proven that he can deliver Ohio, at least conservative Ohio, he can now try to play his cards to fill the veep slot for either Trump or Cruz. Is he the best person to do that? I have my doubts, but I suppose we could do worse.
Now that Rubio is out, how are things going to work? If Rubio had dropped out before yesterday, Cruz would surely have won Missouri, and perhaps Illinois and even Florida. In some states, he seems to have surged at the end and exceeded expectations. That’s all good news. Rubio has not been getting many votes lately, however, so it’s hard to know how much difference his absence will make.
One thing’s certain: Cruz’ performance is now important not only for the number of delegates he would bring to a brokered convention, but because a Cruz surge in the remaining states will show the nation, especially Trump supporters, that their guy has peaked and is unlikely to win the general. Cruz needs powerful momentum to win a brokered convention, which will serve to convince Trump supporters that their guy was a flash-in-the-pan who never had a chance. They would then be less likely to be bitter if Trump’s not the nominee, and more likely to turn out for Cruz.
I’m curious to know what’s going on in states that have not yet held a primary. What are you seeing in your un-primaried necks of the woods? I’m from California, but have been away for about a month. My state has reason to be especially concerned about immigration, which seems to be Trump’s strong suit, but on the other hand — little known fact — there are a lot of Mormons in California, which should help Cruz (though it didn’t do much good in Nevada). Still, Idaho and Utah delivered, or almost certainly will have after Utah votes. I think it’s likely that the Mormon population in California greatly improves Cruz’ chances.
Above all, don’t give up, fellow #NeverTrumpers! We’re in this fight to the bitter end, but we hope it’s not too terribly bitter for the sake of conservatism. Our nation needs our greatest commitment now.
Published in Politics
To be clear, I find them equally appalling. If a 3rd party run means Hillary will be president, at least there will be a party to oppose her in 4 years. Yes, she will be a disaster on SCOTUS, but she may very well have to face a reinvigorated and determined Senate. A Clinton win may, ironically, smooth the path for the GOP to make gains in Congress and in governorships. I don’t see Trump having coattails at all. In addition, Trump appears, like Clinton, to have no core convictions. If he wins and the Dems make gains in the House and the Senate, well, I can hardly contemplate the results and keep my composure.
Please believe me when I say I am miserable no matter the outcome.
The way forward is to expose enemies of liberty as enemies of liberty. The sad thing is, many Trump supporters do not appreciate that they are actively campaigning against the liberty many of them claim to cherish.
I actually think that Trump will tank in the west, which is far different than the south. Very few western states have voted so far, but Utah, Idaho and Wyoming are not fans. Anybody out there have info on Washington, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico or Montana? Nevada is kind of its own game because of Trump’s connection to gambling, which rules the roost there.
If a Cruz/Kasich ticket were announced soon, and if Rubio plus more establishment figures were to endorse it and promote it, it might not be too late.
Kasich is not even close to my favorite for VP, but if it consolidates the anti-Trump vote, I’ll take it.
Another thing we should keep in mind: It’s not still not impossible that Trump melts down.
The biggest worry for me now is that too many establishment types will refuse to get behind Cruz, because they’re still dreaming of a more moderate candidate emerging from a brokered convention.
Not my problem.
Many of the Trump supporters wanted to burn down the GOP*; well, here you go. I didn’t create this mess, so don’t start laying on the guilt trip to help clean it up. Y’all are on your own.
*I’m not saying you’re one of them, Tuck, because I haven’t read all your comments.
My fear is the inevitable bump in the polls from such a melt down.
Kasich might actually be a pretty good VP. I won’t speculate on how he would fare as a candidate, but actually serving as VP he might be effective. Vice Presidents don’t often count for much, true. But Kasich’s longer and more successful experience on the Hill should be valuable to the more prickly Cruz. It makes more sense to me than Cruz/ Rubio ever did.
I could get behind that ticket with some enthusiasm and if they did it soon enough, they might stop the runaway train.
I’d take Cruz + anyone for VP if it meant stopping the TrumpTrain.
I don’t believe, and never have, that the GOP objection to Cruz is that he is too conservative.
Kasich and Trump both have fascist tendencies, but they differ on immigration. So it depends on how important the immigration issue is.
I like Tuck in every thing he has said in this thread. I held my nose for McCain, held it for Romney and yet still voted. You folks here are so high and mighty that you are openly supporting Hillary. Well go for it. I hope you lose. Trump was asked to support the winner of this primary, even if it wasn’t him. It seems to me that he agreed. Now that he sits with a nearly insurmountable 47% and growing delegate count, many Republicans want to take their ball and go home. Just remember, if Trump wins, he will have done it without spending a dime of OPM, and like a true businessman, by being thrifty and smart with his own dollars. I think he has spent less than any other candidate currently running. Hopefully he will be as thrifty while running the country. We know for sure Hillary will not. We also know that Hillary will walk away with millions aggrandized through influence peddling. You all want that woman as your President, well just keep this up and that’s who you will get
Katie, I agree with a lot of your recent comments but I can’t see this happening. What could possibly happen that would cause a Trump meltdown? Any other candidate could lose the voters’ favor if some horrendous scandal came to light. But what would it take for Trump’s supporters to turn their back on him?
Look at Ben Carson for one example. Ben Carson is known as a deeply spiritual man. Donald Trump is the candidate most proud of his sins. Trump at a campaign rally essentially said that Ben Carson should be rejected because he’s not the right kind of Christian. And yet Carson endorses Trump. I’m not saying Trump is the inevitable nominee, but I cannot picture a meltdown that would cause pro-Trump people to reject him.
Um. This is factually incorrect. Many people contributed to his campaign. Millions of dollars of OPM.
So, by the way, did the media.
This isn’t about being “high and mighty”. This is about not having a presidential candidate I respect and who shares at least one of my core values.
Romney is so decent that he makes a speech full of ad hominem attacks against Trump and for nobody. He has proven himself to be totally scurrilous in my opinion. And he ran a terribly weak campaign. But this isn’t about Romney, he was simply an example of my sense that even though I didn’t much like the candidate, I supported him because he represented my Party and was better than his opponent. Of course no one made me vote for him…that’s pretty ridiculous.
iWe my mistake, he has received campaign contributions…about 27.5 million, the largest being $50K according to Open Secrets. To call 27.5 million a pittance hurts down deep in my gut, but darn if it isn’t.
Oh, Romney is running this year? I missed that announcement.
Arizona votes next week. I’m going to be voting for Cruz, now that Rubio is out.
I don’t have any sense of how Arizona is going to vote, and haven’t seen any recent polls. RCP has none since last October.
I did see my first campaign ad last night (I rarely watch live TV). It was for Bernie Sanders. It highlighted his opposition to the Keystone pipeline and support of the global warming agenda.
My first impression was that it was an attack ad on Sanders, but no, he was actually trumpeting these positions.
Obviously, I was not his target demo.
Never happens in US politics. You might as well just vote for Hillary and be honest with yourself.
Roosevelt elected Wilson, Perot elected Clinton. There may be other cases but those are the relevant examples.
In a first-past-the-post voting system, you vote FOR your candidate or you vote for the other candidate. It’s just arithmetic. A vote for someone who will take votes away from Trump is a vote FOR Hillary.
Again, Trump’s not a Conservative, what he does after he’s elected has no bearing on the Conservative movement, which, if they’re smart, will work with him to influence him, as Sessions is doing, and not alienate him and drive him to the other side. He’s clearly up in the air, ideologically.
Again, as above, this is simple arithmetic. You can stay on your moral high-horse, but vote FOR Trump or you’re voting FOR Hillary. If you sit it out, or vote for a third-party, you’re voting FOR Hillary.
How you can reconcile that with any supposed moral position is a mystery to me, as she’s probably the worst person ever to run for US President. She’ll make us look back fondly on Obama like Obama made us look back fondly on Bill Clinton.
Not necessarily your mistake, You were just echoing what Trump himself says.
Do you really want 4 years of repeatedly finding out that everything you hear from the man is a lie?
This would be a reasonable objection if the alternative wasn’t Hillary Clinton.
“Conservative” is a malleable term. We have fights all the time about what it means because it means different things to different people.
In practice, successful presidents have a big impact on how people view political labels. Reagan defined “conservative” for a generation, and ever since aspiring GOP candidates have tried to reassemble the Reagan coalition and answer every policy question by asking themselves “what would Reagan say?”
If Trump were to win in a landslide in November, get reelected in 2020, and go down in history as a popular president, he will redefine conservative for another generation. Some of us old-timers will sit in the corner muttering to ourselves about how we are the true conservatives who still believe in things like small government, free trade and entitlement reform, but in the popular perception Trumpism will be the new working definition of “conservative.”
I think we should apply this argument to campaign contributions, too. Every $100 you don’t donate to the Trump campaign is $100 donated to the Clinton campaign.
Every hour of the day spent not working phone banks for the Trump campaign is an hour spent volunteering for Hillary.
I’m not so sure about this. Hillary may be better than Obama. I don’t think she’s as ideological–she is more about personal power and self-promotion. But less about those two things than Trump.
Trump’s doing so well, I posit, because that’s already happened. There’s no bid in American politics for small-government Conservativism any more. Cruz was the last rally.
Which isn’t to say it couldn’t come back, but it won’t in this Presidential election cycle.
The GOPe will suck it up and learn to love the Trump, to keep the gravy flowing.
So in order to continue having influence, rather than taking our ball and going home, we need to stay in the game. That means working with Trump, not electing Hillary.
LOL.
She’s also has high negatives and is not very popular even with her own party — note the turnout problems and the improbable rise of Bernie. That’s why I think any GOP candidate besides Trump could beat her. Trump’s the only candidate we could field with even higher negatives than Hillary.
But even once she beats Trump, she won’t be very popular and won’t have much of a mandate. She’ll practically be a lame duck from day one and be very vulnerable in 2020.
At this point I’m not so sure she even wants to be President. She wants to go down in history as the first woman President, and she can check that off her bucket list on Inauguration Day. After that she’ll just coast through 4 years and might not even bother running for reelection.
I think that actually makes her a worse person. If Obama really believes he is doing good and I disagree that is one thing. I can respect Sanders because I think he is being honest in his beliefs, even if his ideas could never work.
Clinton being less ideological and more about personal power, may possibly make her easier to deal with but maybe not, it does not make her a better person.
It continuously amazes me how little understanding there is of how our election system works… Even here.