“***I like Intrade for 2 reasons. 1) it’s more reliable than poll result...”
When Intrade is trying to project a future event such as a candidate dropping out, it has no more reliability than drawing straws.
Polls aren’t predictors of events, they’re snapshots in time of popular opinion.
On the other hand, Intrade, and Rasmussen’s trading thingy are trying to be inherently predictors of future events. That’s what it means when Rasmussen posts “Rasmussen Markets Show 29.0% Chance of Clinton as Democratic Nominee.”
And in that just a short while ago, that percentage was in the upper-60+% range, that means one of those PREDICTIONS is wrong.
“***Here’s where we differ. Look at the results of proposition 187 in California, and Bill Sali’s run in Idaho...”
“***In marketing terms, you’re saying the TAM (Total Available Market) for Thompson is bigger than the TAM for Hunter. But it’s your own belief, my belief is based upon the 1980 and 1980 electoral results, which showed a huge TAM for conservative evangelical pro-life, and the 1996 election which showed a tiny TAM for a centrist republican.”
I understand what you’re saying, and actually, I agree with you. It’s just that I don’t view Mr. Thompson as a centrist. I view him as a moderate CONSERVATIVE, not a moderate. Mr. Bush is a right-leaning moderate, a centrist just to the right of center. Mr. Thompson is a conservative, albeit not a far-right conservative.
“***We need real data on this. Dems jumped over by the boatload for Reagan, a pro-life evangelical conservative.”
The difference between 1980 and today is that there were many conservatives who were still Democrats. Many pro-lifers, too. Like me. Thus, there were plenty of us to get to cross over.
But, most of us have crossed over by this point. 1978 was my first election and 1980 was my first presidential election. Although I registered as a Democrat when I turned 18 in 1978, and remained a registered Democrat until 1990, I musta been a pretty conservative one, as I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life, except once when the Republican nominee was a member of the Nation of Islam (I’m not making this up).
But there aren’t too many conservative Democrats left anymore.
In any event, I kinda doubt that Mr. Hunter will pull too many cross-overs in part because HE’S NOT PULLING IN MANY ACTUAL REGISTERED REPUBLICANS.
“***In some ways I agree. How did those Iowa results strike you? Was Huckster a surprise to you?”
Surprise? No. In the closing weeks and days of the Iowa campaign it was pretty clear that Mr. Huckabee would win comfortably. Disappointment? Certainly.
The question that will be answered later this month about Mr. Huckabee isn’t how well he’ll do in New Hampshire or South Carolina, but how well he’s been able to turn his Iowa campaign and result into campaign cash. Huckabee + $10 million on Dec. 31 looks like nearly even odds to take the nomination. Huckabee + $1 million on Dec. 31 looks a lot iffier.
Same for Mr. Thompson. Given a mid-seven figure, or low-eight figure cash-on-hand, he’s not even odds, but he has a fighting chance for the nomination. Given low seven figures, and he’s pretty much out of the running.
And, of course, the same applies to Mr. Hunter. Except even worse. Especially now that he’s out of the debates, and in light of the fact that he’s going to do poorly in New Hampshire, a lack of funds at this point will likely prove to be the coup de grace.
“Hunter did pretty well in a state where he chose to campaign.”
Only relatively speaking, Kevmo! If he got one out of 12 delegates in Wyoming, then that suggests he got EIGHT PERCENT of the vote! Is that what Hunter folks are crowing about?? EIGHT PERCENT when he was trying hard?
Then why isn’t Mr. Thompson’s THIRTEEN PERCENT where he tried hard an absolutely stellar result?
Face it, Mr. Hunter stinks as a candidate. Mr. Thompson may not be the gold standard, but he got THIRTEEN PERCENT in a contest that was heavily competed, in a state that is not a natural spot for him, and Mr. Hunter got EIGHT PERCENT in a contest that most folks ignored, in a state that is well-suited for him.
“***I guess electoral votes, which are set up by our constitution, don’t mean as much as poll results, which are set up by corporations with agendas.”
Convention delegates aren’t the same as Electoral votes. Convention delegates choose party nominees. They aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. What’s mentioned in the Constitution are the Electors of the Electoral College.
Electoral votes decide with finality who will be president. The Electors to the College are all chosen on one day, and that result is final.
On the other hand, we’re still a long way off from the day that the Electors are chosen. At this point in the contest, significant gains in public perception are more important than winning a single convention delegate. I’m sure that Mr. Thompson wouldn’t trade his 13% in Iowa for Mr. Hunter’s single convention delegate from Wyoming, but I’d bet that Mr. Hunter would have glad foregone his lonely Wyoming delegate in exchange for Mr. Thompson’s Iowa result.
For one thing, then it would likely have been MR. THOMPSON being excluded from the debates, not Mr. Hunter.
Without money, and without the free air-time one receives from debates, it’s tough to see Mr. Hunter’s path to the nomination.
“There was a time on Free Republic when, what you wrote right here would have showed you to be unconservative.”
Recognizing reality, that more Americans are swayed by the results of the Iowa beauty contest than by the Wyoming caucus, isn’t unconservative. It’s just clear-eyed and unsentimental.
“***Then why did he say he needed to come in second? He didn’t come in second.”
To encourage his troops to work harder. I know that sometimes I set goals for my own employees that I think are probably not going to get met, but if they get near to them, I’m happy.
I’m not sure it was a good idea to say what he said, but I don’t interpret it at all as meaning that he needed to come in second to remain hopeful for the nomination.
“***Again, you’re not seeing that the significance is the change in the data.”
I’m seeing that these “markets” aren’t actually very good PREDICTORS of events, but rather are the amalgamated conventional wisdom of their markets.
“***I agree, he did. Was that what you thought his campaign was going to be like, a crawl through the trenches? At this point in time he was supposed to be kicking tootyfruityrudy to the curb, but instead he is fighting for 3rd place.”
I hoped he’d have done better, but not terribly surprised he isn’t. Presidential politics ain’t beanbag.
I’m certainly less surprised at the current state of the race than, say, many Giuliani supporters, who’d told me in the spring that Mr. Giuliani was the candidate of inevitability, and that if I didn’t hop on the bus, along with all the other social conservatives, then they’d leave me and all the other social conservatives out in the outer darkness to wail and gnash our teeth. And I told ‘em, well, if that’s the case, then so be it.
I’m certainly less surprised than all the Romney backers, who also told me that Mr. Romney is the candidate of inevitability, a prediction that looks markedly foolish to me after he spent untold millions in Iowa and got his butt thoroughly kicked by a guy who was almost dead-broke at the end of the third quarter.
And I’m also less surprised than many Hunter backers, who had been telling me that once the actual voters got to the polls, Mr. Hunter would do well.
He hasn’t.
“We Hunter supporters knew he was a bit of a long shot, and things went quiet when Thompson entered the race with his enviable name recognition. But looking at what Thompson has done with his name recognition and poll position, I see a lousy candidate. He reminds me of the Fred Thompson who had a chance to damage the Clintons on Chinagate and didn’t press forward.”
Mr. Thompson may not be as good a candidate as we would like. He is, however, easily surpassed in the category of lousy candidates by Mr. Hunter.
“***OK, then why are you taking your cue from what others think? The country is going to hell in a handbasket, are you going to follow it?”
In what way am I following? I’m observing and judging. I observe that the country ignored the Wyoming caucus. I judge that that is very bad for Mr. Hunter’s actual candidacy. Whether I think that’s good, bad, fair, unfair, or whatever, isn’t relevant. The only point is that it’s true. Mr. Hunter may have won something on the order of 8% of the vote (hardly a result about which to brag, anyway), but hardly anyone in the United States knows about it. Even if he’d one THIRTEEN percent of the vote, it wouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t keep him in the debates, it won’t get him third place in New Hampshire, it won’t raise $5 million for him.
Practically, its only meaning is that he’ll have at least one friend at the convention.
“***You sound like a Navy guy.”
Not sure what you mean by that. I’ll take it as a compliment, although I was never in military service.
“And I disagree vehemently with your assessment. I heard Bob Dole was a leader, not a manager, and that he was nicknamed ‘Babe’ after the pig who wanted to be a sheepdog.”
Actually, Mr. Hunter sorta reminds me of Mr. Dole. He’s another gentleman to whom I feel very warmly. Having met him, I always liked him. But I never thought he was exactly a leader. In fact, he always struck me, when he was Majority Leader, as precisely a manager, rather than a leader. He was the guy who developed the consensus of the caucus, and then figured out the methodology by which to use the structures and rules of the Senate to get it done.
That’s management, not leadership.
“That got us nothing. And I also heard Reagan ran his whole presidency by pulling out 3x5 reference cards.”
Mr. Reagan set the agenda and the grand strategy. Others, folks similar to Mr. Dole and Mr. Hunter, figured out the tactics to get it done.
Mr. Thompson, in this way, has been the most Reagan-like. He’s the only one who’s been willing to lay out real specifics, especially in areas, like entitlements, that most politicians run from.
“These are all interesting stories, but they don’t sway me.”
I wasn’t trying to sway you so much as trying to identify the source of folks’ unwillingness to follow Mr. Hunter.
“***That’s because the republican party has changed. This is a conservative website with no affiliation with the GOP. Did you know that?”
Sure. But the point is, we’re mostly working within a party, and for candidates running for the nomination of a party. The REPUBLICAN Party.
“We’re inundated with tons of people who call themselves conservatives (even tootyfruityrudy supporters) but they aren’t. I really don’t care what ‘most Republicans’ instinctively feel, because most republicans are not all that conservative.”
Well, I care, because the nominee will be chosen by Republicans, not just conservatives, however defined. And I’d like the nominee be someone for whom I can vote.
“I’m not sure that’s much of a strategy. Pick off 1/12 of the delegates in the smallest states, and let the larger states go essentially unchallenged. Ouch.
***If those aren’t real delegates, then it’s a good strategy.”
Winning 13% in the nationally-hyped beauty contest in Iowa would have eventurally yielded a lot more delegates in a lot of other states than winning 8% of the delegates in Wyoming.
What’s the next Hunter target, Delaware? Rhode Island? ;-)
How’s Mr. Hunter currently polling in his home state? Has he broken 5%?
“***Then why do you acknowledge that he is a moderate conservative, basically ‘conservative enough’? Thompson does not fill out the Reagan mold, Hunter does.”
I don’t see that Mr. Hunter fits the Reagan mold at all. He isn’t a leader. He doesn’t have the charisma, the communications skill, the easy affability of Mr. Reagan. Mr. Reagan was successful in part because he was a brilliant politician. I won’t say that Mr. Thompson is a brilliant politician, nor a great communicator of the first order, nor the most charismatic man in politics today. But he is a far better politician, far better communicator, and far more charismatic than Mr. Hunter. As well, he has much of the easy affability, comfort with oneself, in one’s own skin, of Mr. Reagan.
Mr. Hunter doesn’t.
“But Reagan tapped into the discontent, making him electable. Hunter can tap into the discontent over immigration, WOT, and FleeceTrade.”
I don’t think that Mr. Hunter could tap into a beer keg. With help.
He’s a nice enough guy, a good and decent man, a good conservative, but an entire bust as a presidential contender.
“***Except that he was being called a moderate conservative at the time, but he has veered left.”
I remember he was touted as a moderate, and as better than the Gray Davis or Bustamante alternative.
What I remember was being told that the fact that he was a pro-abort and such didn’t matter, because, after all, he wouldn’t have anything to do with that stuff anyway, and he’d tap conservatives for his administration, etc., etc. Reminds me of Mr. Giuliani, not Mr. Thompson.
“If Thompson drops out and endorses McCain, would that give you pause about his conservatism?”
No, it wouldn’t.
I don’t care for Mr. McCain, but he has compiled a record of a moderate conservative, albeit more centrist in recent years. I wouldn’t vote for him in the Maryland primary, even if Mr. Thompson had endorsed him, but I would vote for him in the general election, should he be the nominee.
“At the time we couldn’t get it across to starry-eyed freepers that aRINOld was no conservative, but now it seems perfectly clear. If you go on over to the Intrade Forum and see why they think Thompson is tanking, you’ll see stuff that is not allowed on Free Republic and you might find yourself withdrawing that characterization of ridiculous.”
I don’t think so. Mr. Thompson isn’t Mr. Schwarzenegger. The comparison is not only ridiculous, but offensive.
sitetest
When Intrade is trying to project a future event such as a candidate dropping out, it has no more reliability than drawing straws. Polls aren’t predictors of events, they’re snapshots in time of popular opinion.
***When all is said and done, and the poll results are compared to futures market results, futures markets are more reliable.
On the other hand, Intrade, and Rasmussen’s trading thingy are trying to be inherently predictors of future events. That’s what it means when Rasmussen posts “Rasmussen Markets Show 29.0% Chance of Clinton as Democratic Nominee.”
And in that just a short while ago, that percentage was in the upper-60+% range, that means one of those PREDICTIONS is wrong.
***It’s exactly the same as the poll thing, where at that snapshot in time, those were the chances. The trick is to look at the events where the polls predicted one thing and the futures market predicted another, and the futures markets are correct more often than the polls.
I understand what you’re saying, and actually, I agree with you. It’s just that I don’t view Mr. Thompson as a centrist. I view him as a moderate CONSERVATIVE, not a moderate. Mr. Bush is a right-leaning moderate, a centrist just to the right of center. Mr. Thompson is a conservative, albeit not a far-right conservative.
***OK, then which candidate is more likely to lean left to attract middle america, Hunter or Thompson? It should be obvious to you. But when has leaning left ever worked for republicans on the presidential ticket? Hint: Dole, Bush Sr. vs. Clinton, Ford. When has standing your ground worked? Hint: Reagan. Using the above strategy, which candidate is better? Hunter.
I’m going to break up the rest of the post into smaller sections because I lost a bunch of typing when FR went off line.
I’m certainly less surprised at the current state of the race than, say, many Giuliani supporters, who’d told me in the spring that Mr. Giuliani was the candidate of inevitability, and that if I didn’t hop on the bus, along with all the other social conservatives, then they’d leave me and all the other social conservatives out in the outer darkness to wail and gnash our teeth. And I told ‘em, well, if that’s the case, then so be it.
***Well, I was right there in the trenches with you.
And I’m also less surprised than many Hunter backers, who had been telling me that once the actual voters got to the polls, Mr. Hunter would do well. He hasn’t.
***He has, where he campaigned. We’ll just let the chips fall where they may.
Mr. Thompson may not be as good a candidate as we would like. He is, however, easily surpassed in the category of lousy candidates by Mr. Hunter.
***I’m disappointed in you because I gave plenty of factual support for my view and all you offered was, just your view.
Whether I think that’s good, bad, fair, unfair, or whatever, isn’t relevant. The only point is that it’s true.
***OK, I understand where you’re coming from. But when both of us were in the socon trenches shooting at tootyfruityrudybots, is this where you wanted to be, defending an undemocratic process that favors your candidate who happened to originally sponsor the legislation (CFR)that spawned this outrage?
Mr. Hunter may have won something on the order of 8% of the vote (hardly a result about which to brag, anyway), but hardly anyone in the United States knows about it. Even if he’d one THIRTEEN percent of the vote, it wouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t keep him in the debates, it won’t get him third place in New Hampshire, it won’t raise $5 million for him.
***This is pretty much the same argument as last paragraph, an extension of it, so I’ll just answer with the same answer: when both of us were in the socon trenches shooting at tootyfruityrudybots, is this where you wanted to be, defending an undemocratic process that favors your candidate who happened to originally sponsor the legislation (CFR)that spawned this outrage?
Practically, its only meaning is that he’ll have at least one friend at the convention.
***Everyone thinks their candidate is the best, and yet only one guy wins. Many have been surprised by various things in this race, like Tanc endorsing Romney, Obama beating Hildebeast in Iowa, Huckabee beating Romney in Iowa, George Bush not running for a third term, etc. At the end of this process, only one of these guys moves forward. The chances are that it won’t be Hunter and it won’t be Thompson. If Thompson fulfills the Intrade contract and drops out, who do you think he’ll support? How will that make you feel if he supports McCain, his friend from the senate? Is that what you were fighting in the trenches for?
“***You sound like a Navy guy.” Not sure what you mean by that. I’ll take it as a compliment, although I was never in military service.
***Basically, the Navy guys I’ve run across like that cliche, “he’s a manager,not a leader”, and they also tend to discuss things in anecdotal terms and will look at a generalist argument (most males who are hair dressers are homosexual, here is the such&such numeric breakdown) and they’ll discuss one anecdotal case of a guy who was very heterosexual hairdresser and in their mind that addresses the argument.
“And I disagree vehemently with your assessment. I heard Bob Dole was a leader, not a manager, and that he was nicknamed ‘Babe’ after the pig who wanted to be a sheepdog.”
Actually, Mr. Hunter sorta reminds me of Mr. Dole....—snip—
***here, you’re going into the anecdotal stuff again, like a navy guy.
Mr. Thompson, in this way, has been the most Reagan-like. He’s the only one who’s been willing to lay out real specifics, especially in areas, like entitlements, that most politicians run from.
***Nope. Hunter has him beat on specifics. At least for the issues that are on my radar.
“These are all interesting stories, but they don’t sway me.”
I wasn’t trying to sway you so much as trying to identify the source of folks’ unwillingness to follow Mr. Hunter.
***You were going into your anecdotal Navy Guy mode. It only really addresses an argument when the other guy is giving you a piece of data in the same format.
I’ll need to separate this post again into another section, for the same previous reason.
Sure. But the point is, we’re mostly working within a party, and for candidates running for the nomination of a party. The REPUBLICAN Party.
***The same Yeah, but... response I usually see.
Well, I care, because the nominee will be chosen by Republicans, not just conservatives, however defined. And I’d like the nominee be someone for whom I can vote.
***That goes to my original point. This is not a GOP website, it is a conservative website. JimRob has a pretty good definition on the front page.
Winning 13% in the nationally-hyped beauty contest in Iowa would have eventurally yielded a lot more delegates in a lot of other states than winning 8% of the delegates in Wyoming.
***We shall see. The landscape changed when the media didn’t let Hunter into the debates, in a state that’s supposed to be an early state where the focus is on inclusiveness. I see that your arguments are trending more republican than conservative.
What’s the next Hunter target, Delaware? Rhode Island? ;-)
***I don’t know Hunter’s strategy.
How’s Mr. Hunter currently polling in his home state? Has he broken 5%?
***I’m here in liberal Cahleeforneya. Remember Proposition 187? Remember how polls don’t mean much to Hunter supporters? How’s that Intrade dropout contract for Thompson in January and in February? Does it give you confidence? The cool thing about the Intrade stuff is, if it really gets under your skin you can actually go ahead and do something about it and if you’re right you would make money, maybe as soon as tomorrow. I can’t do much about polls in liberal Cahleeforneeya, as far as I can tell.
I don’t see that Mr. Hunter fits the Reagan mold at all. He isn’t a leader.
***Circular reasoning. You said before that you don’t think he’s a leader, so now he doesn’t fit the mold because he isn’t a leader in your estimation.
He doesn’t have the charisma, the communications skill, the easy affability of Mr. Reagan.
***Neither does Thompson. Romney and Huckster seem to have that covered.
Mr. Reagan was successful in part because he was a brilliant politician. I won’t say that Mr. Thompson is a brilliant politician, nor a great communicator of the first order, nor the most charismatic man in politics today.
***Then by your own reasoning, Thompson does not fit the Reaganite mold.
But he is a far better politician, far better communicator, and far more charismatic than Mr. Hunter.
***I disagree, and part of that disagreement is in the commitment to the message. Nuancing pro-life with a federalist approach is a copout, no one would do it with baby-killing. So when you proceed from a morally inferior position, your communication of the message becomes inferior. Hunter is a better politician and communicator because he proceeds from a higher moral ground. Charisma isn’t something I can measure very well, it’s usually more to do with looks (women swoon over Romney) and Hunter is fine compared to Thompson in that regard.
As well, he has much of the easy affability, comfort with oneself, in one’s own skin, of Mr. Reagan. Mr. Hunter doesn’t.
***You’re simply way off here. Oh well, it’s not worth arguing over.
I don’t think that Mr. Hunter could tap into a beer keg. With help.
***I see your argumentation is once again trending towards republicanism rather than conservatism.
He’s a nice enough guy, a good and decent man, a good conservative, ***I see this kind of stuff a lot. By the way, it doesn’t jibe with the earlier comfortable-in-his-own skin remark.
but an entire bust as a presidential contender.
***Get back to us when Thompson drops out and endorses McCain. Most Thompson supporters on Free Republic will feel betrayed. The ones who do not feel betrayed are the ones I worry the most about, because they’re republican operatives infiltrating Free Republic, not conservatives. Hunter’s support comes from those dedicated to the same idealogy, and they detect integrity in him. If he endorsed a RINO, we would feel betrayed. I do not detect the same level of commitment in Thompson supporters, they are in it for the political win, the same way aRINOld attracted so many GOP supporters.
I remember he was touted as a moderate, and as better than the Gray Davis or Bustamante alternative.
***And I remember that aRINOld was touted as “conservative enough”. Sound familiar? Is aRINOld “conservative enough” for you now?
What I remember was being told that the fact that he was a pro-abort and such didn’t matter, because, after all, he wouldn’t have anything to do with that stuff anyway, and he’d tap conservatives for his administration, etc., etc. Reminds me of Mr. Giuliani, not Mr. Thompson.
***Me, too. At least Thompson has a pro-life record, so I can vote for him with a clean conscience. But I don’t have to support him. I learned the aRINOld lesson that so many freepers and republicans have not.
“If Thompson drops out and endorses McCain, would that give you pause about his conservatism?”
No, it wouldn’t. I don’t care for Mr. McCain, but he has compiled a record of a moderate conservative, albeit more centrist in recent years. I wouldn’t vote for him in the Maryland primary, even if Mr. Thompson had endorsed him, but I would vote for him in the general election, should he be the nominee.
***Good to know.
I don’t think so. Mr. Thompson isn’t Mr. Schwarzenegger. The comparison is not only ridiculous, but offensive.
***Then I’ll just need to bookmark it and hope I remember where it is later if we find ourselves in the same sort of mess with the presidency this time rather than the california GOP sad state of affairs.