Posted on 06/19/2015 7:10:09 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With Donald Trump's escalator ride into the presidential race this week, the Republican 2016 primary has now officially spun off its axis, hurtling out of orbit into some weird reality television show universe, where any truth is magnified to clownish absurdity. On some level, modern politics has always been a little like this—but if 2012 was Jersey Shore, innocuous in its meaningless, this year's race is more like peak Real World—a messy house filled with insane, hysterical people where the stakes are unclear, and also ominously high.
Trump, of course, is Trump: Ostensibly a real-estate magnate and television personality, he is, in 2015, more like a deranged rich uncle who keeps showing up at your house unannounced and taking about how much he hates it. With no tangible base of support or political career to speak of, the Donald hired actors to fill the crowd at his campaign launch Tuesday, and then proceeded to suggest that undocumented Mexican immigrants were largely rapists. None of that changes the fact that he is also, no joke, running for president of the United States.
It's tempting to dismiss this as a footnote—an easily brushed-aside piece of political trivia that you'll have a hard time explaining to your children. The Democratic National Committee basically did as much in a snarky statement welcoming the "much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field." But Trump's campaign announcement comes at a weird time in the GOP's 2016 race, making him just a little bit more difficult to ignore.
Currently, Trump is polling at around 3.6 percent, accordingto the RealClearPolitics average, putting him at No. 9 among a possible 15 Republican candidates competing for the nomination. To be fair, 3.6 percent isn't very far from nothing—but it's also only seven points behind Jeb Bush, the party's presumptive frontrunner.
This doesn't mean that Trump has a chance. To be very clear, Donald Trump will not be president. But it does mean that the Republican field is so messy, so filled with loud and petty politicking and candidates who can't convince anyone of their value, that, as comical as it sounds, Trump has about the same amount of support as many of the candidates his party sees as legit. Which doesn't say so much about Trump as it does about the other candidates.
At the moment, Republicans essentially have seven guys polling at almost identical rates nationwide. Bush leads, with about 11 percent, and Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz trail close behind. Unbelievably, Carson, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon, led a national poll last week, despite having offered no compelling evidence to date that he even knows what the president does.
Because those seven dudes are running about even, what would normally appear to be the second tier—people like Trump, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Chris Christie, who will all decidedly not be president—are running only a few points behind. To give you a point of reference, at this time during the 2008 primary cycle, Barack Obama trailed Hillary by 12 points. Jeb Bush isn't even polling at 12 percent.
It's particularly interesting that Jeb! — who should've been the big man on campus, the alpha male, the thoroughbred of this maniac horse race —just can't get ahead of the game. That same Monmouth poll that put Carson at the top of the field found that voters are souring on Bush. The conservative fringe hates him, and even Republican moderates, his expected ace in the hole, are bored as hell by his campaign. The RINO Establishment, meanwhile, is openly skeptical of the youngest Bush scion. "When he said at the outset of his run that he'd be willing to lose the primary to win the general, it seemed a poetic (not to mention nonsensical) exaggeration," the National Review's Rich Lowry remarked, "but occasionally it's appeared to be his actual plan."
Bush's father and brother were presidents: that does not make Bush exciting, but rather a known quantity. No matter how many explanation points he puts at the end of his name, Jeb! will still be a drip in the public eye, and that's not the right look for this madhouse primary.
Consider the competition: Paul, for example, has spent the week writing screeds about blowing up the tax code; Cruz can't get through a speech without saying something completely insane—even Walker has the Koch brothers, the deep-pocketed kingmakers who make Mr. Burns look like Bill and Melinda Gates. Rubio, meanwhile, is a ball of fun: young, charismatic, and worthy of New York Times' hit pieces about his driving record. And Rush Limbaugh's frenzied defense of Carson guarantees that the good doctor will inspire some frothy-mouthed support for the foreseeable future.
The rest of the 2016 wannabes, like Trump, will continue to be mostly charming distractions, spare bodies packing the clown car—nobody remembers Morry Taylor, after all, and nobody's going to remember Trump after he bows out to host an Iowa special of The Apprentice. But in the absence of any serious contest, Trump and his sidekicks—the Carly Fiorinas and Rick Santorums and Rick Perrys—have become the main event, the blaring laugh track to the 2016 Republican race that will only make it harder for someone to actually win this thing.
It seems our idiot liberal friends can’t get off the “clown” references when talking about the GOP presidential field.
Hillary and Bernie Sanders is sanity? LOL!!
Who wins if they throw it to the convention?
That probably is my preferred outcome.
I’d like to see delegates put their heads together and pick the candidate they think would be best for America. Hopefully, they’d care, but even if they didn’t, it would be an interesting exercise watching them decide.
We’d get a Warren Gamaliel Harding.
At a convention bribes take over. Trump wins there too. There is no law to keep them from lining their pockets. You didn’t know that did you.But the liberal wing wanted to have “winner take all” let them now eat their pie!! Go Donald!! It is happening. hillary added 6 points to Donald today. No mercy!!
If they throw it to the Convention, which will be controlled by the GOPe, then Bush gets it. I don’t want to see it go to the Convention for that reason. But with this “nomination by plurality” mess that is just where this is headed.
“It seems our idiot liberal friends can’t get off the “clown” references when talking about the GOP presidential field.”
My gut tells me that the sooner we pare down the field the better, for a variety of reasons, this being one of them. Some of our top candidates will never successfully be characterized as ‘clowns”, no matter how badly they (media/democrat operatives) want it to stick. For the Democrat Socialist candidate and Communist candidate, much easier.
I think the GOPe controls it, but I’m not sure they want Jeb to be their president. For president they want someone who is chamber of commerce compliant, but for candidate they want someone who is chamber of commerce compliant AND who can win.
In that big mess of names, which compliant candidate could actually win the presidency?
I think its Rubio instead of Bush. The Bush name is a big loser, and they know it.
So, I’m expecting Rubio to get big funding to win it before the convention, but if it goes to the convention then it will be Rubio.
He was tarnished by a crooked cabinet member, but even the Tea Pot Dome scandal was mild when compared to the insanity of a rapist in the Oval Office and a man who breaks even laws named after himself.
I advise anyone who is interested in how to fight a modern financial panic to look to Harding and Coolidge in their handling the Depression that wasn't in the Panic of 1920. It is text book as to the ability to grow revenue and employment through limiting the distorting of an economy by the central government.
https://mises.org/library/forgotten-depression-1920
What has happened in the last six years is a replay of the horrors of the Great Depression. Not a single year of the Depression has had an unemployment rate as high as that of the 2010’s if we used the same metrics to get the Unemployment Number.
Because they need diversion from their 3 stooges?? M. T. Suit, Biden, and Bill’s Hill....oops better add one (forgot Holder)
“So, I’m expecting Rubio to get big funding to win it before the convention, but if it goes to the convention then it will be Rubio.”
Rubio is too short. He won’t be President any more than Rand Paul, anothet shrimp. Mark my words, and yes it does come down to things like this.
Hillary isn’t tall, so it doesn’t matter.
What I just love is that every article always has to say “lets be clear Trump will not be the nominee” like they are whistling past the graveyard. These pundits have no clue who the nominee will be. None. Its so early in the presidential race that most of this polling is still name recognition.
The establishment is terrified of Trump because if he gets nominated and God forbid becomes President they have no control over him.
The Uniparty is peeing their pants right now which is why they are sneering, smearting and denigrating Trump with a hysteria you think they would save for Hillary.
Trump is saying what’s on the mind of so many Americans regardless of their party affiliation. Trump is all over the ballpark. He’s no conservative to be sure and he probably is more friendly towards liberals than all of us would like. We know he’s an egomaniac, but he’s a guy who gets things done, and frankly we’re all sick of looking at what’s going on in DC and tired of the entrenched political class that is doing nothing but filling their own bank accounts and enacting policies that are screwing up this country. I don’t far Trump will go in this process. My guess is he’ll go far enough to impact the party and have a say at the convention. If nothing else, he’s lighting a fire under the disaffected people of this country and saying what has to be done.
Very true. I relish the campaigns moving forward with him in the mix.
If I thought we would get a president as good as Warren G. Harding I would sleep much better tonight, MUCH, MUCH better!
I still remember reading about the height factor during the Nixon, Kennedy campaign. I was sixteen when the election was held and I recall telling a classmate that Kennedy would win because he was slightly taller, younger and according to the record the taller man had won every presidential election ever held. He immediately informed me that I was “superstitious”, I couldn’t get across to him that it is not superstitious to believe that people who have always elected the taller man will most likely do so again. That was probably the biggest single reason McCain could not win against Obama but very few Americans realize that. The GOP might be better off to just look for the tallest, best looking man they can find who can ACT the part. As for Hillary I still do not believe that the women of America want to see a woman in the white house. Whatever the majority of women want is what we will have because women are the majority of registered voters but I think the ladies still want a man in the presidency.
Women voters who are undecided until just before the election break AGAINST the female candidate 70-30.
I know it’s strange, but it is reality.
Harding, even OH people don’t like him. No Ohioan has been elected since.
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