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Are You #NeverTrump?
For months, we’ve speculated, theorized, and (occasionally) hyperventilated over how we’ll vote in the general election. So — with the stipulations that the following poll makes no pretense of scientific accuracy and that the Ricochetti have polled quite differently than Republicans at large — let’s shed a little light on how members of The Smartest Conversation on the Right intend to vote this coming November:
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Get a life. Trump said that about shooting someone as a METAPHOR to explain how his popularity is robust.
I firmly resent being called a fanatic by the likes of someone who hurls such baseless attacks. Real fascists of our current day include people who defend the State at all costs. Is Trump really so dangerous to you? I’m becoming less tolerant of those who dismiss my views by comparing them to last century’s monsters’. I’m of the Ricochetti, but not afraid.
I think that if Trump shot someone on Fifth Avenue, he’d be arrested and later convicted. Of course his die hard supporters would continue to support him. That’s true of Mitch Daniels, too. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a lot of faith in the American political system to avoid worrying about nominee killing sprees; Trump supporters in the Senate are similar in numbers to Cruz supporters; if he were to murder someone in public, he’d be President Emeritus later that week.
If your complaint about him is that he inspires a lot of devotion, then I don’t follow; how is that different from any other President? If your complaint is that he might do it, I disagree. If your complaint is that he suggested it, I think you misread him.
Troy Senik’s latest interview with VDH is about this very topic. For a farmer’s view check it out.
James,
A few points.
First, I cannot take seriously the notion that if Trump is the Republican nominee that we will be able to plausibly claim the Trump does not represent conservatism/republicanism. He hurts the brand more than I think you acknowledge. Any argument you make to the contrary is countered by the comment “But he’s your presidential candidate.”
Second, I think you underestimate the damage Trump can do compared to Hillary. The Republican Party would stand United in opposition to Hillary whereas Trump can drag a number of Republicans along with him on issues where he holds foolish beliefs. If Hillary where to propose further expansion of Universal Health Care the house will stop her dead in her tracks. If Trump proposes it he can drag enough Republicans along with him to actually make it happen.
Third, I have looked at numerous swing state polls and do not find significant gaps between Trump and Cruz. When Trump is ahead of Cruz it tends to be by tiny margins. All of Trump’s poll numbers are moving in the wrong direction and have been doing so for many months. He is now consistently polling double digits behind Clinton whereas Cruz has had a slow Improvement in his numbers head-to-head with her. I don’t believe Cruz will win but Trump has no chance of winning when his negatives with women are running about 70%. He has absolutely zero chance of winning the election. Even if I were to agree that Ted Cruz also has a 0% chance of winning the election I would prefer not to have a liberal caricature of what a conservative is heading our ticket on the way to losing.
Fourth, there’s certainly a strong argument not to choose the libertarian party as the alternative you vote for as opposed to Trump or Clinton. But that isn’t the only choice. I’m planning to write in a name.
A metaphor, is it? For how his popularity is “robust”? I would urge you to consider – I didn’t call you a fanatic. I simply quoted something Trump said. He called his supporters fanatics. That’s what the Fifth Avenue statement meant. And it seemed to me, when he said it, even he was surprised by the intensity of the cult of personality that has grown up around him. And this from a guy whose ambition in life is to paint his name across the sky in lights four stories tall.
Oh, sure. I’m not meaning to deny that. Although it’s not a great hand, though, I think that we can do a lot to show that we’re not the party of Trump by pointing to the party that we are. The Presidential primary is currently an all Trump affair, with Trump’s “we’ll resolve the budget crisis by cutting taxes, ending waste, fraud, and abuse, and being unkind to people you don’t like” fighting Cruz’s message of the same thing with longer words, Trump’s message of protectionism running against Cruz’s message of even greater protectionism, Trump’s message of less intervention, but what intervention there is being war crime flavoured running against a different selection of less intervention, more war crimes, Trump’s belief that we’ll win in the GWoT by avoiding political correctness running against the same message, etc. etc. etc.
Look outside the Presidential race, though, and the GOP remains a party of adults. There isn’t a second Cruz or Trump in the whole of Congress (this shows up in the near unanimous non-endorsements, with half of Cruz’s two Senate endorsements being unable to say anything remotely complimentary about him). There isn’t a Cruz or a Trump in in the Governor’s Mansions. We’re achieving great things, and it seems helpful to emphasise the sheer degree of weirdness of the race.
I don’t think that Trump could drag as many Republicans with him as he’d lose Democrats. Trump’s unfavourables are high in the general population, but they’re much higher in the political class. I suspect that we’d see bipartisan veto overrides becoming the standard way that business is done. I should clarify that that probably wouldn’t lead to results that were particularly good, outside the Simpson-Bowles legislation I’m hoping for, but I don’t think that universal healthcare is one of the likely options.
Sure; I agree that Trump isn’t much more likely than Cruz to succeed if current polls are accurate, but I disagree with your claim that he’d be much less likely.
Sure, but the national numbers are based on Cruz having a huge lead in red states. Cruz would win Texas by unprecedented numbers, but the electoral college was specifically designed to stop that from being meaningful.
That’s part of the polls that you’re citing. I think it’s unlikely that he’d win, but I don’t believe that it’s impossible. A lot depends on events. A successful ISIS attack, or any other major news story that hyped racial tensions, for instance, would do it. More importantly, the way that Trump wins support is by making people feel that he sides with them when they’re looked down upon. Clinton is worse at avoiding that than just about any politician alive.
I don’t think that you believe this. What odds do you think that Mondale or Dukakis had at this stage of the election?
I totally see that argument. I think that there’s an uncanny valley effect in play; Trump is so dissimilar to the rest of the party that I think he’d taint the rest of the party less. It’s not hard to make a 30 second ad arguing persuasively that Ayotte or Kirk are “Ted Cruz Republicans”. They, like Cruz, are attorney-senators and they mostly vote with him. It’s much harder to plausibly claim that Trump represents who they are. Still, while I prefer my narrative of the down ticket impacts, I think both have truth in them; either one (or “stealing” the election for someone else) is likely to lead to some awful results.
I’ve been arguing for write-ins for months when people were saying that they couldn’t vote Republican. In general, I’ve been recommending that libertarians vote for Penn Jillette if they’re not very into libertarian politics, or L. Neil Smith, the Libertarian nominee for Arizona in 2000, if they’re hardcore.
Who are you choosing? I suspect that you’ll be better than I am at selecting appealing candidates. Mike Lee is, I think, my dream for a convention pick and hence for a conservative write in.