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On This Day After New Hampshire
From my inbox:
For two years on Ricochet’s flagship podcast, you guys keep me optimistic. “All the talented governors who skipped 2012 are going to get in this thing. Some fresh new senators will keep the early debates lively before stepping back to wait their turn later.”
Now we see a talented bumper crop of GOP governors gets blown up by THE DONALD while the two fast talking senators sparked a war of all against all underneath him.
Draft Mitch Daniels.
If only.
Published in General
Ironically, it’s an excess of governors that is currently the problem. Well, an excess of the wrong governors anyway.
You don’t need to draft Mitch Daniels who doesn’t want to do it. You already have Jim Gilmore.
He’s right there. Pretty solid campaign positions on his website.
Mitch Daniels would have similarly gotten eaten alive by Trump. He probably would have cratered just as quickly as Scott Walker.
I was very despondent this morning, but am getting considerably less down by the hour. I think expectations have been lowered enough with Rubio that a good debate performance in South Carolina on Saturday, not even a great one, will be trumpeted as a total triumph for him and he will start to pick up momentum again. After that he will have a good chance to beat Bush and Kasich in both SC and Nevada. If he does that, I think his lane starts to clear as he starts to draw support from the people currently backing his more centrist rivals, primarily Bush.
If Rubio doesn’t clear out his lane, I suspect the center of the party who is currently unsure whether to wait for a strong horse in the moderate lane to emerge will give up on that side of the party and fall in behind Cruz.
Either way, I’m still optimistic that Trump gets Trumped before it’s all over.
No, that’s not the problem. Nor is Christie’s shiv in Rubio’s back a problem. Nor is it money. And until the GOP realizes what the problem is… lack of trust in the party, professional politicians, and the consultant and donor classes that back it… they’re going to continue to have a “Trump Problem” of some kind.
Trust… Is… Shot.
Thanks for cheering me up too. Praying you are right…
So we have New Hampshire sucks and draft Mitch Daniels. Jeez, maybe Ricochet, or some of the Ricochetti, needs a suicide watch live chat to make sure people pull through this.
PEOPLE, THERE IS A LONG WAY TO GO YET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can live with it not being Walker’s time, or Perry’s, or Jindal’s. I find it much more difficult to live with the fact that it may well be Trump’s.
Now this has been the most sober thing said on here all day. People better wake up.
You can say that again. When presented with the assertion “we will do X, Y, and Z,” a reasonable observer will respond “you will do 20% of X, head fake in the direction of Y, and the next time someone mentions Z, you will get that absent-minded look on your face before quickly changing the subject.”
I live in NH, and it does kinda suck right now.
Still not a rational explanation for electoral suicide.
Well that’s understandable. You went through your Shiloh. There are wounded on the field. I understand that. But there are people who won’t vote for another two months, or at least three weeks, and they sound as though it is over. That Hillary might as well be sworn in. People need to get a grip.
The voters don’t see it as suicide. They see it as “We’ve tried X over and over and get the same results. Y says he’ll do it differently. Let’s try Y”. That’s perfectly rational.
See, this is what I am talking about. Electoral suicide? It’s one freaking primary. Trump only has 17 delegates and needs to get another 1240 to be the nominee.
Your hope is in the Member Feed, Peter. According to the delegate tracker Wiley shared, Trump has just 17 delegates out of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination. Cruz has 10 delegates and Rubio has 7.
Buck up, Buttercup! You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Peter you’re as clued in to the establishment as anyone here on Ricochet is likely to meet: our question, why haven’t the powers that be run commercials against Trump? Why not highlight his $450,000 a month personal spending allowance during his bankruptcy [from his banking consortia] while the chump sub-contractors got screwed? Why not highlight how he dumped his first wife for a gold digger that picked him up at church? Trump at this point might slip into the nomination as other demagogues in the past – Allende in Chile, even Herr Hitler, with 20 to 30% of the vote if somebody doesn’t wise up.
Except that Y happens to have never been on our side ideologically. If it’s not electoral suicide, then it is at least ideological suicide.
But it is an emotional one, and emotions are in control now.
I know there is still a long row to hoe. The problem is the momentum building behind Trump. These things tend to become feedback loops.
I cannot believe that we are sitting here today with the prospect of either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders as a president of the United States. I realize that there are about nine months left till election day. But, good grief!! Those two?? I know why people are so fed up with the Republican “elite” or “establishment” and find Trump’s unfiltered rhetoric refreshing. But he’s waaaaay too embarrassing and weird and self-centered to be president of the United States. We’ve put up with The Royal O-ness for these miserable eight years; can’t we at least have someone elected president that is a little more dignified than Trump or Sanders? (and I don’t mean Hillary, either…) The only possible positive note I can find, is that neither of them will be immune from press criticism due to their race.
Yes. If you’re very worried, Peter, then you and Rob should be reaching out to all the campaign strategists and politicians you know to persuade them that Bush needs to redirect that war chest of his to attacking Trump rather than Rubio.
That said, I’d guess that the reason they’re going after Rubio is because they have had blinders on and (like so many others) can’t bring themselves to believe that Trump could actually win the nomination. Well, let this put that wishful thinking to rest.
Money talks, as they say. And the money isn’t being spent on hurting Trump.
The only people left in the race (now that Fiorina’s dropped out) with the ability and courage to take on the Left in the general seem to me to be Trump and Cruz. I hope Cruz wins.
The general election isn’t going to be about issues, it’s going to be about taking on the Clinton Crime Family in a fists, boots, and all street fight.
Meanwhile it’s kind of fun watching GOPe and some stuff shirt conservative commentator’s heads explode over Trump. In fact pass the marshmallows and enjoy the campfire.
No. It’s really not. It’s a bit like saying “I’ve tried driving to work over and over again and I keep getting stuck in traffic, so tomorrow I’m going to go to the top of my building, jump off, and fly to work.”
Who’s committing suicide here? It’s tough to remember, but it is the candidates’ job to persuade the voters. The GOP doesn’t make the voters do what it wants them to do. It tries to persuade them.
The voters aren’t suicidal. They just don’t like what the GOP is selling.
How could Trump’s win have been avoided? I have two retrospective suggestions:
1. Run on a platform that is more appealing to voters*: repatriate illegal aliens, secure trade deals that offer more to wage earners, don’t promise to change Social Security, etc.
2. Run some candidates who are more persuasive. Rubio’s persuasiveness is vastly overrated**. Cruz is weird***. Jeb Bush is terrible (and named Jeb Bush). These guys can’t win.
So if the GOP is committing suicide, it’s because they didn’t back the type of charismatic centrist candidate the voters evidently want.
*There aren’t 100,000 Ricochet members in New Hampshire, alas.
**I suspect he might be kinda stupid but highly disciplined, an uncommon combination that’s tough to notice.
***I don’t know why. He just is.
In other words, stop being a conservative party.
It is important to remember, at least 65% of Republicans did not vote for Trump.
84%+ didn’t vote for any of the others either.
Either that or be more persuasive. It’s no coincidence that the most conservative candidate to win the election since Coolidge was also the most charismatic candidate since Theodore Roosevelt.
TR was a progressive.
I beg to disagree! Game over man!
Trigger Warning! Bad Language in Video! Trigger Warning!
With the exception of Trump, the others are conservatives to one degree or another.