Posted on 03/30/2016 4:47:20 PM PDT by sargon
In my humble opinion, the Republican party has effectively and totally destroyed itself with its relentless character assassination vendetta against its own frontrunner, Donald Trump.
There will be no recovering from this. Here are the only possible scenarios I can see, as we finish the primary season and move into the GOP convention:
Scenario #1: The only scenario that has the potential to expand the GOP demographic base permanently and beat Hillary is for Donald Trump to win the nomination and face Hillary in the general election, either with a clear majority or a near majority of delegates.
Scenario #2: Ted Cruz wins the GOP nomination fair and square, without jumping into bed with the GOPe. In that case, his narrow demographic base probably dooms him, but at least voter enthusiasm is preserved. Unfortunately, this scenario has already been obviated by the fact that the GOPe is demonizing Trump nonstop, infuriating his voters, and Ted Cruz has adopted the Establishment tactics wholeheartedly, which alienates Donald Trump voters who otherwise might be willing to support Ted Cruz.
Scenario #3: Ted Cruz wins the nomination with the help of the GOPe, either by getting a majority of delegates or by leapfrogging the frontrunner at the convention. This scenario still results in a candidate with a vary narrow base who likely can't overcome the demographic realities which accrue to the benefit of the Democrat party. Furthermore, this scenario also results in furious Trump voters who believe in their hearts that the nomination was stolen as a result of the constant character assassination directed at Donald trump.
Scenario #4: The convention is contested and someone other than Trump or Cruz is nominated. In this case, voters from both of the leading candidates are furious with the party, and enough of them stay home for Hillary to win easily.
So that is my analysis.
It looks very much to me like the "Anybody But Trump" movement is beginning to succeed. Unfortunately, that "anybody" is going to be Hillary Clinton, unless she's indicted, in which case any of the above scenarios could still, theoretically at least, result in a GOP victory.
Barring that, however, the only scenarios that could succeed are scenarios number 1 & 2.
And, as I have already noted, scenario #2 has already been destroyed by the GOPe, with Ted Cruz acting in full complicity.
Thus, conservatives' best hope is scenario #1, just like it has been for the last few months. It is the only scenario still possible that preserves voter enthusiasm, expands the GOP tent, and wipes out Hillary in the general election.
Since scenario #1 is itself becoming less likely now, IMHO, and due to the causes I've outlined, this leaves me with the inescapable conclusion that the GOPe has already screwed the pooch. The GOP will not win the White House in 2016 absent Trump at the top of the ticket. It could have won with Cruz possibly, but only in the case where Cruz remained an anti-Establishment candidate, and didn't adopt the Establishment tactics being used against Donald Trump. It's already too late for that, of course.
I'm convinced that the GOP will be content to remain in marginal power by controlling the House and perhaps still the Senate. That will allow them (with Hillary in the White House) to preserve the system as it is, where both parties scratch each other's backs, put up token opposition on various issues, and everybody just keeps enriching themselves at the expense of the People.
For doing what they have done, the GOP deserves to die a painful and lingering death. I, for one, am done with the Party, and will never register as a Republican again: not even to vote in their closed primaries. I'll stick with being a registered independent.
It saddens me very much to write these words, because, only a few short months ago, we had 2 candidates with the potential to lead a desperately-needed Revolution in American politics and culture.
But, alas, I believe it is not to be. The GOPe has overplayed their hand to the point where they have destroyed the party's chances for every possible scenario, except for the one case that appeared like it would happen: Donald Trump winning the nomination.
Now, Donald Trump bears some responsibility for this, as does Ted Cruz, for different reasons.
But the real villain in this tragic sequence of events is the GOPe: Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Bob Dole, the National Review, and all of their elitist ilk.
Yes, folks, I'm still hopeful that somehow something positive will come from the criminal and treasonous Establishment proceedings that we all have been watching before our very eyes. But I doubt it.
It looks like the Revolution will have to wait for at least another four years. That's good enough for the Establishment. As long as they can always delay the inevitable, the inevitable becomes impossible.
The hatred that I feel for the GOPe burns within me with a passion that will never die. Indeed, it only waxes stronger with each Machiavellian shenanigan they pull. It will be on full display at the GOP convention as well, of course.
I can't help but feel a profound sense of loss in looking at the state of affairs that we have arrived at.
No matter what happens at the convention, there will be large masses of GOP voters who will feel totally betrayed by the party leadership, and this will carry all the way through to the general election cycle.
All is lost, IMHO, and I say that as a realist, not a pessimist.
He can, but he won't, as a practical matter.
But I think it likely that Cruz will go to the convention with the greatest number of pledged delegates, and lots more than that who are pledged to other candidates on the first ballot.
I look for Cruz to win it on the second or third ballot. If not by then, the GOPe will take over, and God only knows who we'll wind up with. But I know it won't be Trump. Not in a million years.
Yes. I’ve known this for months and have been warning everyone here that attacking Trump is tantamount to handing the presidency to Clinton.
I think you’re right on the money. As for me, if Trump isn’t the nominee I will either stay home or, for the first time in my life, vote for all the democrats. The gop must die.
We’ll see how it plays out, but in case of anything other than scenario 1, your analysis is missing one consideration: the scorched earth/ kamikaze voter. These are the millions of pissed off voters who will show up and not vote for hitlery, but against every down ticket republican.
The gop has done the common core math and thinks it can prevail with hitlery as president. They have something else coming. The gop *MUST* be destroyed.
The RNC does not care one lick if they win the election. Hillary will keep their status quo and entitlements in tack. Winning is not longer the desired outcome. Maintaining their entitlements and protection from the peasants in of the upmost importance.
amen to that
Pro-Americans like ourselves should take every ounce of energy and put it into the #fireRyan movement. If Trump isnt going to win we can at least get rid of the Speaker of the House.
Cruz has said he will not support Trump. I believe he will actively campaign against him. The question is will his followers follow him all the way to total defeat?
All Cruz would have to say is “I’m a Christian and I got off track. Christians forgive. And I forgive the Trump campaign for what I considered personal attacks against my family.”
Short of a massive terrorist attack on our shores that scares the voting populace into action, the GOP is not winning in November. We can’t even hold our own base together.
Perhaps the most corrupt, unlikable Presidential candidate in history, Hillary Clinton, is going to wind up with an electoral victory map that looks a lot like Reagan’s.
Well Trump realized he got slimed by chris matthews.
I still want Trump to realize big picture and put cruz on the ticket.
Addendum
I also get the feeling the GOP sideshow is staged. Old Bill Clinton is drooling over a sex kitten while laughing his a** off over his masterful triangulation of conservatives.
No, no just that. I think that Cruz has screwed everything up by jumping into bed with the GOPe. And that's exactly what he has done. Not just the endorsements, but the tactics. For God's sake, he played the race card!
Ted Cruz couldn't beat Donald Trump "fair and square". All he could do was jump on the GOPe character assassination bandwagon.
Ted Cruz won't have as many delegates as Trump going into the convention. Thus, if he leapfrogs Trump due to his currying favor with the GOPe, the Trump voters will never accept it, and rightly so.
Furthermore, of course, it's my sincere belief that the GOPe intends to cast both Cruz and Trump aside, which will alienate voters from both camps.
Ted Cruz has been compromised by jumping into bed with the GOPe. It's undeniable. And while the path he has taken might possibly result in winning the battle (the nomination) it cannot win the war (the general election).
Ted Cruz could have stayed true to his anti-Establishment principles, but he didn't. He sold his soul, and in doing so he has sabotaged two campaigns.
Similarly, people like myself who support Trump see Cruz as an equally non-viable general election candidate. I mean, for goodness sake, all he has won are some caucus states and Texas, basically, and he couldn't even get 50% in his home state!
Furthermorfe, Ted Cruz has been obliterated in two jey swing states, Florida and Ohio. One must be willfully blind to think that this doesn't matter.
In terms of raw votes, Donald Trump has far outpaced Ted Cruz, which points to Trump being a significantly stronger candidate in the general election cycle.
Ted Cruz's demographic base is exceedingly narrow, and he is showing absolutely no potential for expanding it.
I don't see how that possibly wins a general election, especially since it's a fact that Trump voters will be furious if someone with fewer delegates leapfrogs the frontrunner.
I'm telling you, the GOPe has destroyed the whole Revolutionary dynamic, and without that, business as usual prevails. In other words, Hillary in the White House and the GOP controlling, minimally, the People's house.
The only thing I can see disrupting this pathetic situation is if justice prevails and Hillary is indicted.
What you're failing to acknowledge is that the reason the situation now stands as "vote Trump or everything goes to hell" is because Ted Cruz has gone Establishment in order to curry favor with the GOPe in hopes of being handed the nomination without a majority of delegates. That is a recipe for disaster in the general election cycle, whether you want to admit it or not.
Ted Cruz could have been a viable Revolutionary alternative to Donald Trump, but now he looks to be, at best, merely an Establishment-clinging alternative.
That's just not going to beat Hillary. It just isn't.
If you think Ted Cruz is still the anti-Establishment candidate that he started out as, you're being disingenuous, IMHO, if not outright delusional...
I think what we’ve got going on here is that the GOPe as a group, are wildly out of step with the base (I know, duh!).
That being the case, I think we would do well to examine their methods to see if we can find anything useful to use against them.
Take for example the transparent lobbying for Ohio voters to vote for Kasich, Utah voters to vote for Cruz, all in an attempt to deny delegates to Trump so that the decision of who gets the nomination is taken out of the hands of the voters and put into the hands of the GOPe.
I think what we’ve got going on here is that they like to appropriate power from others, most often the voters, though we can also study their methodology by examining their tactics against Obama. They were given a majority in the House and Senate, but wouldn’t you know it? They have done nothing with that power that they themselves did not want to do.
What I am proposing is that we have been used. Sometimes, they will put out talking points that they want us to parrot, in the hopes that the unwary souls who do so will give them cover for their treason against this great nation and its citizens. We need to start asking “why?” a bit more often.
The way out is to get as many people to the polls as possible, I think. They have succeeded in squandering the wealth of this nation, destroying our economy, rendering us borderless, and destroying our culture and competitiveness, by convincing everyone that nothing we can do matters, and that they will win no matter what. Look at the sewage they have turned on Trump. That is what they do, get so disgusting that good people turn away, revolted.
Get as many voters to the polls as is possible. We don’t just need the desperate and marginalized, we need EVERYONE on this, the more opinions, the more difficult to game the result.
What we’ve done so far hasn’t worked. These people are using us as a foil. At this point our motto should be “the more, the merrier!”
Right now I’m feeling pretty bad about 2016.
Cruz and friends managed to damage Trump enough that I don’t think he can make it.
Cruz is done for in 2016.
The GOP-e will cut him to pieces in a brokered convention, OR he will somehow get the nomination and do worse than McCain in the general.
We will loose the Senate and get stuck with ultra radicals for the next 40 years.
It does seem bleak.
Dem control of POTUS, Congress, and SCOTUS.
Buy guns and gun stocks. The sales volume in advance of the 2nd Amendment “reinterpretation” will be huge.
Starting a third party.
Coordination with disenchanted Democrats to vote out both parties in all elections.
This diminishes the power of both parties and forces accountability. Out of that may very well be two additional political parties, one at a minimum, which still diminishes their power.
I don’t see a downside.
What’s ironic is I was going to make a post very similar to yours and have been thinking about these same points. The only way for this party to survive, and as a result change dramatically, is for Trump to win the nomination. I am not a Trump fanatic, but rather a logical thinking individual.
If the Cruz supporters cannot get behind Trump, Hillary is president because the Trump supporters won’t get behind Cruz, unless he were to win outright, which is unlikely. If Cruz was in the lead now instead of Trump, I would be saying rally around him.
But he isnt, and we have to deal with reality and unite, or miss our chance to bring down the elite. Put emotions and insults aside, for the sake of all you hold dear in this country, and unite against a common enemy to freedom.
The outline is simple:
1. Because of age difference, Cruz is VEEP and gets the second 8 years. He badly needs some seasoning anyway.
Interesting points you've made. Let me speculate.
I've wondered about the following scenario: what is possible at the moment Donald Trump's delegate count PLUS Ted Cruz's delegate count equals 1,237?
At that point, would it be feasible (or even possible) for them to work out a "deal" with each other along the lines you've mentioned, or even along different lines
In other words, at that point (1,237 delegates between them), do they have the power, even theoretically, to commandeer the process and foil the GOPe?
Because, if they do, then that's a scenario I didn't mention, and it might be the best possible outcome, as opposed to them both risking being thrown under the bus.
Does anyone know whether such a deal could indeed be struck? In other words, what level of control do the candidates have over their delegates regarding (at the very least) the first ballot? Can a candidate direct his delgates to vote a certain way?
This is intriguing, but I don't know if it's even theoretically possible...
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