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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
No, because then Cruz stands to win, and Cruz is the kind of person who would be even more toxic than Trump as a Presidential candidate because the mainstream, amazingly, takes him semi-seriously.
Trump is a comic book buffoon running on a stereotypical Fascist platform. Cruz is a fanatical ideologue with a very real and very serious agenda of hate.
edited 6th Jan '16 11:51:13 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Land Wars: The Oregon Standoff Explained As A Star Wars Opening
He's clearly saying that he regrets it in that he regrets that circumstances were such that he was unable to run, not that he regrets it in that he wishes he had run. The full sentence is "I regret it every day, but it was the right decision for my family and for me."
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I have a question.
tl;dr version is that the GOP's strategy of only looking out for the super-rich, while offering it's middle class voters nothing but lip-service is finally catching up to them.
For better or for worse (worse, definitely worse), Trump has succeeded in taking advantage of the animosity that the aforementioned strategy has generated among voters.
There's been talk of a brokered convention. From what I gathered this is what happens when no primary candidate manages to get the necessary number of delegates to win.
So if Trump were to get the most delegates but fail to get the necessary number (50%+1 according to time)
, things would go to a brokered convention were the candidate will be selected by special "unpledged delegates" who are free to vote however they see fit. This would be the perfect opportunity to throw Trump under the bus and elect an establishment candidate.
But here's my question:
Even though the GOP would be hurt by a Trump nomination, which would guarantee loosing the election and tarnish the party with a permanent association with Trump and his hate speech, would it hurt the party worse to cheat Trump out of the nomination?
The idea that the GOP doesn't care about what its voters think is a large part of how Trump got his foothold in this race.
If the GOP plays dirty to get rid of Donald "the People's Champ" Trumpnote , wouldn't that just give the idea more credence?
Wouldn't that cause voters to permanently disassociate themselves with the GOP? Or even set the stage for a Trump 2.0 in a future election?
As you noted, and we've discussed before, the Republican Party lies in a festering morass of its own creation. By promising right-wing populism but delivering tribute to the wealthy, it's lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the people who are most angry at the system. Trump has rallied those voters.
If the GOP allows him to take the nomination, they will definitively lose the general election and may also lose control of the Senate and many state/local races as animosity towards Trump poisons down-ticket races.
If the GOP forces him out, he'll run as an independent and fracture the party, handing the Democrats a 2016 White House win even more easily. It is less obvious what might happen in down-ticket elections, though.
If they run too sharply against him in the primary, they'll risk alienating his voters from the GOP entirely. If they don't call him out, they'll risk alienating mainstream voters during the general election.
Watching this makes for some delicious schadenfreude, but it is really not a good sign for the country's politics.
Interestingly, Rachel Maddow pointed out the sharp similarities between Trump's current run and the run of George Wallace in 1968
, a Southern populist who won 46 electoral votes as an independent, one of the best such showings in U.S. history, on a platform of pro-segregation and general racial hatred. He failed, but the immense (relative) support for his message inspired Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan to form the foundation of movement conservatism, which led inexorably to the Tea Party movement.
edited 6th Jan '16 8:14:39 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The sentiment underlying the reactionary, populist extremism that empowers such folks as Wallace and Trump has not gone away and probably will never go away entirely. The problem is that there always seems to be one party shamelessly pandering to it for its votes, which only serves to empower it, and a national media apparatus that loves the "controversy" and so gives it lots of free airtime.
edited 6th Jan '16 8:37:45 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The email thing was completely manufactured as a drama specifically to make Hillary's support go down. There was a minor scandal when the first guy they tried to replace Boehner with actually said something to that effect on air. So yeah, whatever your misgivings are, you can put the one about emails to rest because it's completely stupid. Literally everyone uses their own email because Congress would never approve spending money to improve/buy newer, secure servers for government purposes. And most of her emails weren't classified until after the fact. (Which appears to be usual for the CIA for some reason? Iunno.)
In any case, even Bill Clinton said he regrets some of his own policies from his presidency. I genuinely like Hillary as a candidate. I think she'll do a good job. But Sanders also seems like a cool guy, and in any case I'll vote for either of them with no questions asked because the Republicans this year is full of men with incredibly regressive policies that I think would torpedo this country, and also Trump. Democrats are the only ones I have faith in this election cycle.
Although I don't think Sanders is technically a Democrat; he ran in Vermont on a state specific third party and listed himself as Independent when running for national office. I suppose it's just semantics at this point, though.
edited 6th Jan '16 10:45:57 PM by AceofSpades
Sanders isn't merely "not giving focus" when the questions are specifically on non-economic issues and he turns it back into an economic issue. It's like Graham and turning questions about PP into something about Daesh.
The man doesn't really have a plan outside of economic fields beyond "Keep doing what Obama is doing", which on the foreign policy side is very much "meh", and not always on partisan lines either.
Foreign policy doesn't tend to be what gets presidents elected, in my observation. Not beyond "we're being tough on terrorists" in my voting history. Or "we're bringing troops home now". American understanding of our foreign ventures tends not to be very nuanced among the voting populace, from what I can tell. I'm including myself in that.
I don't think anyone's saying Sanders focus on economic issues is a bad thing so much as it sort of... blinkers his responses to things that aren't specifically about economics. Granted, you can solve a whole lot of problems with his policies. He does seem to be doing better on addressing the race issue, though.
From what little I've seen of him, that seems to be the case. IIRC, his opinion on ISIS is that they're caused by global warming and income inequality.
To be fair, according to my Dad, it isn't unreasonable to assume that the weather is making middle easterners really grouchy.
Leviticus 19:34Precisely.
And true, its not what clinches elections, but you have to still have an idea for it when you actually get asked the question without overemphasizing the economic argument (which, while valid, is as already mentioned here...not the whole story).
Why is O'Malley still in the race? He isn't getting any traction...

EDIT- Damn pagetopper.
edited 6th Jan '16 11:48:56 AM by FFShinra