Posted on 01/21/2016 8:54:25 PM PST by RC one
For months, the press and the Republican establishment alike have been expecting the Trump bubble to implode. Now that it's clear Trump isn't going anywhere, we're seeing stories about a long slog of a campaign or even a brokered convention. But there's a very real possibility that, far from those kinds of days of reckoning, Donald Trump could actually "run the table." Ironically, Trump not only could win — he could win more decisively than any non-incumbent Republican contestant for the nomination since the dawn of the modern primary system.
Let's see how that might happen.
New Hampshire
First, let's look not at Iowa, but at New Hampshire. Trump has been leading in New Hampshire by double-digits since August. If those polls are to believed, Trump is poised not only to win, but to win decisively.
Conventional wisdom is that whichever establishment-friendly candidate places second — at this point John Kasich is lined up behind Trump, but Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and even Jeb Bush are all said to have a shot — is going to be Trump's most-viable challenger for the nomination. But if Donald Trump dominates with 30 to 40 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, and they come in 15 to 20 points behind, how is that possible?
More logically, whoever wins Iowa is going to be Trump's biggest challenger, and if that candidate does poorly in New Hampshire then whoever comes in second there (assuming it's somebody else) will be a long-shot third for the nomination.
So let's look at Iowa.
Iowa
In recent weeks, Iowa has seen a neck-and-neck race between conservative stalwart Ted Cruz and Trump. But the political junkies have been saying that in fact, Cruz has the edge because he has a far more extensive ground operation.
And so he does. But it's worth pointing out that the Cruz campaign has raised expectations considerably by touting this fact. A narrow Cruz win at this point would hardly be an exciting upset.
And Cruz could still lose Iowa. His rise in the state came during a period when he faced virtually no fire from the Trump campaign — and when he was directing virtually no fire Trump's way. That's no longer true. Moreover, Trump has actually led in four of the last five Iowa polls. And that was before the Palin endorsement.
Because of heightened expectations, a Cruz loss in Iowa would be devastating. He's been counting on a victory there to propel him to second or third place in unfriendly New Hampshire, and to possible victories in subsequent primaries in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday.
If Cruz loses Iowa, and the air goes out of his balloon, who benefits? Who's the leading second-choice candidate of Cruz supporters? You guessed it.
And if Cruz does win, it's worth noting that Iowa frequently doesn't vote for the nominee. It voted for Bush in 1980, Dole in 1988, Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012. There's a common assumption that a narrow Cruz victory would puncture the Trump hype balloon — and it might. But that's not the way Iowa has ever played out before.
So, as the race stands now, the most likely outcomes are either a Trump victory in both Iowa and New Hampshire, or a Cruz win in Iowa followed by a Trump win in New Hampshire. How might the rest of the race play out? Let's look at the two states after New Hampshire: South Carolina and Nevada.
South Carolina, Nevada, and beyond
South Carolina was decisive for every GOP nominating contest until 2012. It gave 55 percent to Reagan in 1980, 49 percent to Bush in 1988, 45 percent to Dole in 1996, and 53 percent to Bush in 2000. McCain just edged past Huckabee in 2008.
And how's Trump been polling in the South Carolina? I thought so.
Of course Gingrich won South Carolina in 2012, and that predicted nothing except a change in the South Carolina electorate, which had, prior to 2012, showed a markedly deferential attitude toward the Republican establishment. The vote for Gingrich signaled a profound dissatisfaction with the party establishment that has clearly not abated.
And even if the establishment wanted South Carolina to perform its usual function in 2016, party leaders are not doing the things necessary to make it happen. Consider the role of Lindsey Graham. From the beginning, his campaign's main impact was to prevent party leaders in South Carolina from throwing their support to another, more viable candidate. Now he's dropped out — and endorsed Jeb Bush's struggling campaign, which will likely hobble the more-viable Marco Rubio's campaign even further.
If Donald Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, why wouldn't he win South Carolina? And if he loses Iowa and wins New Hampshire, why wouldn't he still have a strong shot at winning South Carolina, even against a surging Ted Cruz?
It's a similar story in infrequently-polled, less-crucial Nevada, which Marco Rubio has targeted as his "best early state" without much evidence of impact. And so on through Super Tuesday, through Florida, and on through the entire primary calendar.
The usual response to these sorts of claims is that polling this far out doesn't really mean much. Contests can get especially volatile as we approach an election date, nobody is paying attention yet, and Trump is riding primarily on name-recognition. But the distinctive feature of the 2016 Republican primary polling has not been its volatility but its stability — at least at the top, where Trump sits.
Volatility in recent prior GOP primary contests has been driven by dissatisfaction with the presumptive nominee: McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. But there is no establishment candidate or presumptive nominee to be dissatisfied with this time. Instead, there's a candidate from far outside that establishment, who is running explicitly against that establishment, but not running a particularly ideological campaign — certainly not one that lines up with traditional conservative shibboleths (which is what Cruz is doing). The extraordinary stability of the Trump vote may be a sign not merely of the high name-recognition of the candidate, but the wide and deep appeal of that stance — or of Trump personally.
And if voters in later states aren't paying attention yet, then what will cause them to pay attention? Primarily, the results of the early contests. Primary contests are partly ways of signaling to the partisan electorate who they are supposed to vote for. So early Trump victories could well signal to the less-engaged portions of that electorate that the party has decided — and decided for Trump. Even though, in the minds of those supposedly in charge of the party, they most certainly haven't.
Cruz is the only challenger to Trump who has gotten any kind of traction, but his rise has been overwhelmingly on the right, a path that numerous insurgents have taken and failed in. Maybe he'll succeed this time — but why assume that Trump will be easier to defeat in this manner than candidates who were manifestly more disliked by the rank-and-file GOP electorate? Isn't it more likely that, if voters in New York or Pennsylvania see their choice as "Trump or Cruz or some loser," they'll mostly go for the angry but non-doctrinaire Trump?
The rest of the crowd of candidates needs to take advantage of the nomination's "blue wall" that supposedly stops conservative candidates from winning. But Trump already has the advantage in scaling that wall. His strongest regions are the Northeast and Midwest. He polls just as well among self-described moderates as among self-described conservatives.
The mainstream candidates can't get any traction because Trump is ahead of them in their lane, while Cruz is the classic ideological conservative challenger. How does that story — a stronger-than-usual poll-leader blocking the moderate path to the nomination, and a more-divisive-than-usual candidate playing conservative insurgent — not imply that the less-ideological but charismatic poll leader is the favorite to win?
Here's the bottom line.
No non-incumbent has won both the GOP's Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary since the dawn of the modern primary system. Trump has a real shot to be the first. And no recent candidate has overcome the kind of deficit most of the other candidates face in both national and state-by-state numbers at this late date, against a candidate with as strong and stable numbers as Trump has, and gone on to win.
If Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, and then goes on to win South Carolina and Nevada — as he is favored to do — he could very conceivably win every contest, or at worst lose a favored son state or two like Cruz's Texas. Nobody has run the table like that — not Nixon in 1968, nor Reagan in 1980, nor Bush in 2000.
And if he loses Iowa to Cruz, and wins New Hampshire decisively, there's little historical reason to believe that Cruz has a better chance at the nomination than Trump does, much less that anybody else has a better shot than either.
A Trump nomination would be unprecedented. But an upset victory by any of his opponents would, in many ways, be even more so.
Re: Exile would work for me.
I prefer the classic treatment for traitors.
Exile on the moon?
Oh, that is the correct answer, but not the politically correct answer that he was looking for. After all, Trump is evil...just ask any “Principled Conservative”.
Principled Conservatives would rather lose to the liberals than see anyone not meeting their exacting standards of pure conservativeness win.
“He will have to explain to his supporters about him being a Shareholder with Goldman Sachs “
It’s possible that many of us are shareholders via pensions, 401(k)s, etc. We just don’t know it because it’s bundled with other things. Holding shares is different from being in a full-time decision-making position.
Another FReeper (jimbo123) suggested something disturbing. Here it is:
“If Cruz wins a good number of delegates, Rove and Priebus will DECLARE HIM INELIGIBLE and STRIP HIM OF HIS DELEGATES and give them to Jeb at the convention.
That’s why Jeb is sticking around. Jeb is counting on a brokered convention with a GIFT from Rove and Priebus of Cruz’s delegates.”
“he is also undeniably a showman. Another P. T. Barnum? Dudley J. LeBlanc?”
Ronald Reagan?
“Hijacking Trump’s nomination with rogue delegates brokering their votes to others would be the end of the GOP.”
Yeah. I wonder what we could do, if anything. How could we revolt? I sure do think they’re up to something to hand it over to Jeb. There’s no other reason he’d still be hanging in there. He’s too prideful not to have stepped aside already with some small measure of dignity.
“They” hate Cruz almost as much as they hate Trump. I think Cruz-ers and Trump-ers both need to be aware of the possibility of monkey business at the Convention.
#jealousmuch
No need to revolt. It is probably over anyway. The GOPe has misused the coalition of Constitutionalists, anti-statists, and nationalists over and over to the point where there is no acceptable GOPe candidate.
Riding on the TRUMP TRAIN
all the way to
TRIUMPH!
Is there a trigger lock on that? /S
I couldn’t agree more.
Thank you very much. Hopefully, a tsunami of fresh blood is swept into office with Trump’s election, in the down ticket races. People will be emboldened to challenge the status quo like never before.
bttt
Is there anything more amusing yet simultaneously maddening than having the media and those here with a different perspective trying to lump all those who are supportive of Donald Trump's candidacy into a homogeneous stereotype? Trump supporters come from a much wider swath of society than any other politician that I can remember. The ladies at the Vietnamese nail salon where my wife goes love him. They probably couldn't even name any of the other candidates. Then there are our many friends at the Ronald Reagan Club; it has taken many a while to warm up to Trump but they almost all want to go with a winner.
I have become quite frustrated with most politicians and like you my wife and I come into personal contact with many. Most of those we know well enough to come to meaningful conclusions about are at the state and local level. But still when we say that we are frustrated with them, it has a different meaning than those who just watch politicians on TV or read about them. We know some that are very good well meaning people and more who are complete jerks. If one is relying on the media to try and determine which is which you will never know for sure. Unfortunately, their political affiliation doesn't always have a great deal of predictive value either.
It is refreshing to have someone who is unafraid to speak their mind regardless of the consequences running for higher office. It is a miracle that people are relating to him directly and not relying as much on the media to shape their opinions. The media and the establishment thought they would be able to kill off his candidacy long ago.
We were watching the “Red Eye” show on FOX last night, often it just irritates me, but last night there was something that I found interesting. First they showed Jeb’s new TV commercial that shows Hillary getting elected and saying she couldn't have done it if she hadn't been running against Trump. My wife and I were totally disgusted and everyone on the “Red Eye” said they thought it was pathetic. The host said that Jeb has spent 50 million dollars on his campaign so far and he might has well have just lit it on fire.
After that they showed a Tweet from Donald Trump with a photo-shopped cover of Cruz's book that changed the title to “A Time To Lie” with a balding Ted Cruz on the cover. All of them tried to say it was disgusting and horrible but none of them could keep a straight face and most couldn't even make it through a full sentence without laughing. My wife and I admire Ted Cruz, but we couldn't stop from laughing either. So Donald passed on something stupid on Twitter that didn't cost him a dime and it was far more effective and memorable than Jeb’s expensive and disgusting TV commercial.
To me its a good example of how Jeb spends other people's money on the campaign and Donald spends money on the campaign like its his own... which for the most part it is.
Excellent! For some reason or another, my first look completely missed the script on the back of the fuze lighter. Amen!
I went to a conservative rating website of Congress today. Michelle Malkin was at the fore, and that was sufficient credentials for me. Several stalwarts for the GOP had an F rating, especially those that had come up the ranks from the House with grade A conservative credentials, only to turn into mush in the Senate. In other words, those with spines and testicles need not apply. It was infuriating to learn of this transition. The perks must really be something for this to happen. Disgusting.
I am now more determined than ever to support Trump. I may be going out on a limb, but business as usual has gotten us, the base- seven miserable years of wandering the wilderness and incredulously, we've had majorities for most of that time frame- so, I'm giving my vote to Trump, to clean house. GRRR! Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir so I'll raise my glass in a toast, and bid you a farewell for tonight.
Paul Ryan- F
Jeff Flake- F / My Senator in AZ.
John McCain- F / My Senator in AZ.
John Cornyn- F
Just to name a few.
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