2) climbing on the bandwagon of a minority Republican without any sort of voting record to show just how conservative they actually are. (Hello Colin, Condi, Allen “Pigford” West, and Herman McCain)
Too many fail to spend 2 minutes doing a Google search on a candidate. They jump on the bandwagon because the person gave a good speech or made a witty retort to a media question.
I recall in 2008, many on FR were jumping on the Thompson bandwagon. After a short period of research, I discovered he not only supported McCain's CFR, he also chaired the committee and had his name on the original version.
In both 2008 and 2012, my state primary was so late in the spring that the nominee was determined weeks earlier. Thus, my state primary was irrelevant for the presidential nomination. Also, it gave me little reason to jump on the bandwagon of any candidate; thus, I scrutinized all of them and their warts. Most of the short-period frontrunners were populist-by-default as they split the conservatives and gave the GOPelite the nomination.
Yep. All those fringe candidates tend to have narcissistic leanings, by which they love the attention, and many of them are in it for the cash as well. It’s long been a Democrat practice to get vote-splitters into a race where they can, and I’m convinced that at very least the GOPe, if not the Dems themselves, play that game with apt bribery for the GOP primaries.