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Is Tom Cotton the Solution to a Contested Convention?
A recent post over at Ace of Spades discusses a convention scenario where neither Trump nor Senator Cruz are deemed electable. Whenever this subject is presented, it’s usually just a matter of time before Speaker Paul Ryan is suggested as a possible nominee, but I agree with Ace that Ryan is not a palatable choice for a significant number of Republicans. And while the idea of nominating someone other than Cruz or Trump still strikes me as far-fetched, it’s not as far fetched as I once thought.
Should we find ourselves in the situation Ace describes, I believe Senator Tom Cotton would be the perfect candidate for the party. His pedigree is similar to that of Cruz, but lacks some of the baggage: Cotton is a decorated veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is solid on immigration and sanctuary cities, and he is the only senator to vote against the disastrous Corker Bill. He is an outsider, but has generally remained under the radar and hasn’t ruffled too many feathers.
The conservative movement and Republican party need a true unifier. The current civil war is proving disastrous, and parachuting an unpalatable candidate into the the convention at the last moment will permanently destroy us. I don’t believe we can ever go back to the way things were before this cycle, but Cotton could be a new unifying beginning.
We cannot cede the election to Clinton and say “we’ll really get ’em in 2020.” We don’t have that kind of time.
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Well, polls suggest that we can do it. I don’t suppose anyone has broken down how many precisely of those voters we lose and how many other voters we pick up, but the polls largely suggest that almost anyone beats Clinton more easily than Trump does.
I want a conservative win. That’s an important difference.
Well, we’re all reduced to being Klansmen now? You are the authority on this issue? Or is this merely another straw man argument by someone who hates Trump? Honestly, Lucy, I expect better of you.
Do you really believe we are all for single payer healthcare?
Trump is turnable, Hillary! is not. If you want Hillary! you are on the right path.
I’ve come around to the notion that it’s better to pick an alternate if Cruz and Trump don’t reach the magic number. Whatever the ramifications are, they will be just as undermining as a Trump or Cruz selection.
As to Cotton, I like him, but he’s another one term Senator. If we’re going to go outside the people who ran, you need to pick a governor or Paul Ryan.
And besides, I may be too busy with other things to vote. So what difference does it make, really?
For the umpteenth time, the GOPe will set the rules at the convention. There are no rules right now. For the umpteenth time, the GOPe does not want Trump and the GOPe does not want Cruz. Neither are biddable by the GOPe which is subservient to the K Street interests (the money people). The GOPe wanted Jeb! The GOPe wanted Marco. Now the GOPe wants Kasich, and are pouring money into his campaign. If they are successful they will set the table for their wants, not yours or mine. And if it costs the GOP an election?
There is a reason that much too often the GOP is hard to distinguish from the Democrats in such areas as spending. The last budget might be a clue for you.
You haven’t been keeping up around here have you? If someone actually voted for Trump they are angry white clansmen that grab women and wantonly shove them to the ground for sport.
Additionally, if you voted for and/or supported someone else and you do not participate in the reindeer games of proclaiming that Trump supporters/voters are all of those horrible things you will be marked with the scarlet letter of a Trump supporter and tarred similarly.
LOL. Where do you get this stuff? Do you make it up, or does some Trump propagandist feed it to you? Are you unaware that Cruz has raised many times as much money as Kasich? Or that, even after his unexpectedly good showing in New Hampshire when Kasich’s fundraising exploded, Cruz still managed to raise as much money in February as Kasich has during his entire campaign?
Rule 40 doesn’t say what most people think it does, and it will almost certainly not still be there when the rules committee meets. It was part of the 2012 rules, which are not automatically in play for the next cycle. It has been an assumption that this rule would be renewed, when it was only put in place to foil Ron Paul supporters in 2012.
Even if unchanged, the rule says that a candidate needs the support of a majority of delegates from at least 8 states. If Trump doesn’t get 1237 on the first ballot, then half of the delegates are freed from their obligation, meaning people who didn’t win a state can gain the support of a majority of them.
I’m sympathetic to the idea of a governor but I’m against using people who have already run and dropped out. Paul Ryan of 2010/2012 but not Speaker Ryan. Whether or not it’s fair, Ryan is seen as the establishments guy in the year of the outsider/long shot. Ryan is not unifying anyone, no matter how many Jack Kemp stories he tells.
So you’re saying there’s a chance?
I wouldn’t say not a chance, especially not this year. I know it’s a long shot but perhaps we need to start thinking a little outside the box. Cotton seems like the guy that everyone could live with, so we can get back to the business of defeating Hillary.
If someone in either the Trump or Cruz campaigns have mentioned this, it has escaped me. Both campaigns are going hammer and tong in an attempt to get to the required 1237.
The other consideration, that neither Trump or Cruz is wanted by TPTB, is common knowledge. I won’t waste your time with the Trump stuff, you hate him and that is sufficient for you, but Cruz has managed to cross swords with Mitch McConnell and some of the Republican senators in such a way that there is no love lost between them.
The recent attempt by Senator Graham to patch things up between Cruz and the Senate did not seem to work. Cruz doesn’t seem ready to apologize for calling Mitch a liar over the Import/Export Bank legislation.
The Republicans in the Senate don’t seem to have arrived at a mass endorsement of Cruz.
With regard to Kasich, he is now the beneficiary of the money that was going to Jeb!, then Marco. Can Kasich win? Nope. But with a contested convention anything is possible.
74 continued
Lucy, are you missing the consideration that this thread asks the question “Is Tom Cotton the answer to a contested convention?”
Now wherever did that idea come from? It is not my name under the title.
No, Kasich is not the beneficiary of any money, as his fundraising numbers show. And that was what I was laughing at. It’s too absurd.
As far as the thread goes, do you really think that some Machiavellian “powers that be” put this here in an attempt to suppress the will of the people? It’s an idea floated by one of many ordinary everyday Ricochet members with as much clout as your or I have, who is unenthusiastic about the people left in the primary, as many of the rest of us normal, ordinary, loyal Republicans are. And if you read through it you will see that most of us normal, ordinary loyal folk told him that it was a pipe dream anyway.
Bluto in Animal House. Inspirational. https://www.google.com/?trackid=sp-006#q=animal+house+german+speech
I think there are a couple twists in all this that favor Cruz more than discussed.
The most plausible non-candidate to emerge from the convention as the nominee is Paul Ryan. I just don’t think there’s any way around that. But Ryan would rather be Speaker of the House under Ted Cruz than lose to Hillary Clinton himself. And he has enough common sense to evaluate the politics of the situation. Maybe Ryan wants to be president some day, but if he’d wanted to run for president this year he could have. Ryan would accept the nomination on the fourth ballot if it really came to that, I’m sure. But he is not going to encourage any maneuvering to deny Cruz in his favor, any more than he encouraged Republicans to dump Boehner or McCarthy.
The other factor is that the kind of campaign Cruz is running in Wisconsin — and has a chance to develop further as the race moves into bluer states — may begin to reassure those who perceive him as unelectable. There is some establishment opposition to Cruz in substance, but there are a lot more who simply perceive him as unelectable — on the very reasonable grounds that the senator they’ve seen over the past few years probably was.
Republicans are much less likely to turn in desperation to someone else if they think Cruz can win and the most plausible “someone else” is pouring cold water on the idea.
Beat me to it, Mr.Croft. Thanks.:)
It wouldn’t alienate me if it was the right sort of nominee. I’ll vote for Cruz in the primary, and if Cotton was the parachute nominee, I’d be totally happy.
Right. The fact is, just as many of us — actually that will probably be more of us — will have not voted for Cruz as will have not voted for Trump. And that doesn’t count Cruz’s strategic voters.
I voted for Rubio in VA. At this point, I believe Cruz as the nominee is the most probable good outcome. But I would hardly feel personally cheated if we ended up with someone else. That would have happened partly because the votes of people like me threw a wrench in things. I’d evaluate the nominee on his or her own merits.
If Trump falls short of 1237 outside the margin of bribery, he won’t be the nominee. If Cruz is close-ish, he will be. If Trump fails and Cruz can’t do it, we the voters will have made it clear that we don’t want Trump — but will have failed to coalesce around someone else convincingly. We will have scrambled the egg on our own account, and the delegates get to make the most of it. And I think there’s a fair argument at that point that the nominee should be someone who could have plausibly run and whom the voters haven’t rejected.
This was published at Ricochet in the past few days:
“Pencilvania:I have it from a friend in local GOP that former Rubio supporters are raising money big-time for Kasich in PA right now.
I wonder if they are positioning Kasich to be a ‘unity candidate’, maybe with Marco as VP – ? My friend is connected, and she said these are ‘big, big people in the party’ who are doing the fundraising.”
There are the numbers which are published, and the numbers which are now coming in and haven’t yet been published. Your anger at me is misplaced. It does not serve you.
Just because someone said it does not make it true. In fact, one of Kasich’s biggest donors is a George Soros-connected Democrat, who is presumably giving to Kasich’s campaign because the Democrats know Kasich’s campaign helps Trump, and they want Hillary to win, so they want Trump to win the primary.
I’m not angry with you. I feel sorry for you, because you obviously have so little understanding of the whole process.
The easiest way for you to get to understand the process would be for you to head down to your local Republican party office and volunteer. Maybe you could even be a delegate in 2020 if you do that.
I’ll just add, my friend who said this is a Republican in an elected office. I did not fish for the info, this person volunteered it, I have no reason to believe it is not true.
It is a pity you have such little good faith in the members here.
Not you, but the person who said it you.
The world is full of rumors. It’s better to trade in facts, and there are plenty of facts out there about Kasich’s lack of money.