I’m sure Trump loves Ted Nugent. But, I can tell you as a conservative that not many on the right feel the same way about the old rocker. He is probably one step higher than Alex Jones who is at the very bottom. Well of course there are others.
Just as the left has their bottom feeders.
I’m more interested in your reply to my second point (below), but I am surprised that you think most of the candidates who ran last time will run again. I expect Cruz and Rubio, for sure, but I didn’t think that Chris Christie, Rand Paul, and some others would bother coming back to the party. As noted, though, there’s a lot to cover between now and the next Republican Presidential Primary, so on to the next question…
I’m earnestly curious - what do you propose as a way of winnowing the field sooner?
In theory, I agree that political discourse would be much better with 4-8 candidates on the primary debate stage(s) instead of the 17-person SummerSlam Cage Match that we had last year. In practice, though, I am struggling to come up with a really good way to narrow the field sooner. There’s a nice piece of 538 titled “When Did Trump Become Unstoppable?” that seems relevant here, although it deals more with determining when the eventual winner was certain than with how to eliminate candidates. But perhaps there’s a decent quantitative way to eliminate no-chance-in-hell candidates sooner rather than later.
One thing I’ve never liked about primary season is that the order in which states vote influences the perception of how the race is going and who is gaining/losing momentum at a particular time. I don’t really like the idea of eliminating candidates by their performance in the first few states, because that provides a built-in advantage for some candidates.
So, I’m curious: what do you have in mind?
Running for President is a grand mission. And I think it’s difficult to allow that dream to die. I am only guessing but I do feel the following people will have another go at it based on their perceived desire and other things:
Cruz, Rubio, Kasich (old but not too old), Bush, Jindal, Paul, Fiorina, Walker, Perry and maybe even Graham.
If they run again that makes 10. And there will probably be at least another 5, probably more who will enter the race such as Haley.
Again, I am only guessing that’s all we can do at this point.
One thing that can be done is to have one debate and eliminate the second tier debate. This can be done by using three credible unbiased polls as evidence of a candidates popularity. I’m sure you will agree that there were probably at least 7, or more, candidates who never achieved big numbers and only took up time and space in the debate. Then immediately after two or three debates use those same three polls to further eliminate one or more candidates. I think after three debates people will have a good idea of what each candidate stands for as each will have more time to speak given the fact that the field has already been narrowed prior to the first debate.
And I submit to you that this large field helped Trump achieve the nomination. The anti-Trump vote was split far too many ways.
You’ll find no disagreement from me there at all. I think everyone posting here - Republican, Democrat, pro-Trump, anti-Trump - would agree that he capitalized on the division of the “normal politician vote” in the primaries. I’d love to know, if for no other reason than curiosity, how the race would have unfolded if it had been, says, just Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Bush, and Trump from the beginning.
I think that’s reasonable. I guess what I was trying to get at in my post is that the decision should be based on national polling numbers (which you suggested here) rather than delegates won to that point, which would create an advantage to those performing well in the first handful of states to vote.
If only we had that crystal ball.
Looking at each one and guessing:
Cruz too conservative and repelled the female vote.
Rubio seemed inexperienced and over rehearsed at times.
Bush was lackluster and didn’t have that certain pizzas. There was no excitement with his base. Remember the clip of him saying “please applaud”?
Kasich came off as well informed but he had no charisma whatsoever. He also looked older than his age of 64, at that point in time. If you look at him on the stage standing next to 70 year old Donald Trump, Trump looks a good 10-12 years younger than Kasich.
All of the above things matter as I have said many times people vote with their emotion not their intellect. They vote for who they “like”.
So who knows? Maybe Trump would have won anyway. I would certainly have preferred any one of the above but of course I prefer anyone over Hillary Clinton. And she is the reason that Donald Trump is President today. If the DNC had waited on the Hillary coronation and encouraged an open and fair primary there would have likely been a different end result. But, we will never know that either.
I think eventually they will get over this at least I hope so. Embarrassing enough that they accepted it once let alone more than once
I prefer the rugby scrum actually. You’re telling me that out of millions of republicans we should only have a max of 8 people who want the top job?
Why not have playoffs and a seeding system? Smaller sub debates with scoring. Win your debate and move on. We could make brackets and bet.
Heckling has to be fun! I found myself smiling, nodding my head and repeating (like a parrot?, parroting?) whenever I heard, “Crooked Hillary” or “Lyin’ Ted.”
Nugent goes too far. Calling Pres. Obama a mongrel is in no way, fun.
Pro wrestlers would talk way better trash, but somehow it wouldn’t seem so mean.
I hope so, too - but as long as Trump is President and for a time shortly after he is not (assuming no catastrophic meltdown was the cause of departure), GOP water carriers will continue to support and encourage the Trump model of behavior. They have to, because they don’t want to undermine his authority by directly or indirectly criticizing the Trump way. And the worse it gets, the more the GOPers will double down on their support for Trump and what he brings to the table.
To turn to a smart, competent pol like Haley means a rejection of Trumpian politics, and I don’t know if GOPers have the courage to send that message as long as Trump remains close to the action.
@EyeDentist noted this in a different thread - the problem of “escalation of commitment”:
(Kudos to ED.)
Supporters did (and do) the same with Obama. Hell, it’s one of the reasons (IMO) the Democrats are in such disarray and can’t effectively challenge the GOP right now - they can’t admit Obama’s failings and move on and course correct.
No I’m not telling you that. If it happened the people would be telling you that.
The starting state process is something that really bothers me, having Iowa and New Hampshire have such a strong influence is a dumb tradition.
I don’t think there is a good way to do this, but there is one state who has a ranked voting system that handles a crowded field better.
"How does ranked-choice voting work?
Instead of casting a ballot for a single candidate, the voter ranks all of the candidates by preference. So if there are four choices, the voter is asked to rank them one through four.
If no one wins a majority on the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. For voters, that means if the eliminated candidate was your first choice, then your second-choice vote will be applied in the next round of counting.
If your second choice is eliminated, your vote for third choice will be applied — and so on until someone wins a majority."
I think it has the clear advantage of handling crowded fields like what we experienced in the GOP primaries, where the spoiler (Trump) was winning with a plurality because voters were split among others, but he was not the second or third choice of all the split votes. By combining the split votes it allows people to vote their favorite without wasting their vote
:
“Proponents say the voting method ensures that whoever is elected has the support of a majority of voters. They say this helps increase civility because candidates need to appeal to a spectrum broader than just their base to win over their opponents’ supporters on subsequent ballots. And theoretically it eliminates the possibility of a “spoiler” candidate winning.”
Ranked-choice voting is an interesting solution. I like that idea.
Changing the format of elections(reform!) is one of the most Progressive things there is!
Could the party of Conservatives do something like that?
Completely agree. I’m not sure what the solution is, but this process completely skews the nomination. I’d be open to having a lottery every year to determine the order of the state primaries.
It’s waaaay too soon to think about 2020. I just keep hoping Trump doesn’t tweet anything anymore.
She doesn’t seem bad based on what I know about her and pretty bangable for her age, but I just want to make it to tomorrow. The world stands to change a great deal between now and 2020, so we will see.
Too late…
What…the…Hell…!
The ONLY thing that they are talking about at the G-20 is the DNC SERVER???
WTF???
(PLEASE tell me this is Fake News…)
He has over 30 million twitter followers. He is able to break through the media spin and speak directly to his core. However, I will say he does not use this to his advantage most of the time, squandering the tweets on nonsense. But using Twitter is a good idea he needs to do it right all the time.
President Troll strikes again.
Ah the G20.
Anarchists with “welcome to Hell” signs.
They did agree to a ceasefire… whatever that means.
President Merkel is uploading cell phone videos of Trump.
I hear that Nieto passed a note to Jinping after study hall.
Are you genuinely surprised?
Could he not just hold press conferences and not take questions. Speak his mind and not be relegated to 140 characters, exclamation marks, and 1 word sentences?
Is there a world in which it wouldn’t be easily accessible to see his press conferences online through the media, directly on YT/Cspan, or on TV?