Oh, I agree with you; your analysis is very sound. And you hit on a topic that I totally avoided which is the down ballot races. Either Rump or Cruz just decimates their chances of success.
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But somehow they are all the same to me.
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Why 6? Take a look at the polls:
There’s an obvious place to make the cutoff, and that obvious place is double digits. 4 candidates get 10% or more. But there aren’t any in the high single digits. Below those top 4, the highest polling GOP candidate is 4.4%. And it’s been that way for two months now.
Instead of putting the cutoff at some arbitrary number like 3% (where Fiorina or Paul does have some argument that their 2.8% and Christie’s 3.1% is essentially the same), just put the cutoff at the obvious spot of 10% and only have 4 up on stage.
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If you read the WaPo interview with the guy doing the demographic analysis for them, it becomes clear that the GOP has to do three things to have ANY chance of winning the election.
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They have to drive out white voters in record breaking numbers…more than in any other election.
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Those white voters have to vote overwhelmingly…again more than in any past election…GOP.
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They have to drive down minority voting. Buck the trend and push lower participation rates for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
Any one of those is a tall order. All three verge on impossibility. Trump, with over half the country embarrassed by him, moves it well over that line into complete impossibility.
As he starts escalating his misogynistic comments, which will only get worse the closer wet get to and into a General, both the white participation rate AND the white voting rate for GOP will drop significantly. You simply cannot insult half of the people you need and expect to win.
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The last couple days I’ve been really hoping we get to see JEB miss the cut and be forced into the undercard debate. I got so excited when I saw the headline, but oh well… I’m still holding out hope that the undercard debates last long enough that his continued slide lands him there at least one humiliating time before he’s forced to quit.
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Because the GOP Establishment lane (which is what makes up most of the RNC) has not solidified. Until it does, they are going to do whatever they can to keep as many Establishment voters as possible on that main stage.
Once it does, they will cut the rest loose, and the stage will probably shrink to 3. Assuming that the consolidate before the debates are finished…which may not happen.
It really is time for a tournament format – divide the remaining candidates into groups of 5, each group gets 90 minutes, and then have some mechanism to vote off 2 out of each 5. Let CNN choose to keep one of the 6 losers, giving us 10. Then Round 2 with two debates of 5, and eliminate the bottom 4. Then Round 3 with the 6 remaining.
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You’re definitely correct here! Seems that the problem is that the GOP nomination process is doing exactly what a nomination process is supposed to do – winnow out the extra candidates. Problem for the GOP establishment is that it’s winnowing it down to Trump and Cruz!
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I sure hope so, because as much as it seems like it could never happen, the thought of a well timed, well funded lying ass attack campaign along with a poorly timed Terrorist Attack!™ that leads to an emotionally scared and confused electorate that makes a huge mistake… scares the shit out of me if I get to thinking about it.
I always enjoy the Lightning Bonus Round: thirty seconds to spout as many racist dog whistles as you can.
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Come on, let’s get down to the inevitable endgame, for politics and entertainment ratings–a debate with just Trump on the stage. It would be huge!
Someone pay the man $5,000,000 to make this happen!
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Because when that’s the last straw you’ve got left, you grasp it, no matter how likely or not it is to save you. Because if either Trump or Cruz gets the nod, all the pros in the GOP establishment are well and truly “schlonged”.
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So the stage will still pretty much be empty, amirite?
Explain to me, what happened to Carson? One minute he’s the hottest star in the sky and the next he’s the dust everyone forgot. I didn’t see a nova moment. What happened?
Are they double counting candidates with more than one personality?
Thrown under the hummus…
I don’t think there was a “moment”. I think it was just the accumulation of whackadoodle statements that finally reached a tipping point. His trajectory essentially followed the same track as all of 2012’s “not-Romney’s”. His support built up on the basis of second-hand recommendations - everyone was hearing about him, and thinking that they liked what they heard. But when he actually got enough attention that those followers started seeing and hearing him firsthand, that support collapsed.
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Thanks for that. Christie seems to have a passive/aggressive thing going on, it’s Snooki’s fault, no it’s Tony Soprano’s fault, but he fails to mention his unreciprocated bromance with Springsteen which makes him seem human. I bet people in North Dakota didn’t consider the violence in Fargo when they elected their governor, somebody named Dalrymple.
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John Gall Published a book a few years ago titled ‘Systematics, How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail’. In there he discussed a few rules that he observed ‘systems’ following. Among them (I am going from memory here so my paraphrase might be a little off) was ‘The internal goals of the system are superior to any any goals exterior to the system.’ and ‘Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results that are obtained.’
I bring this up because what we are seeing here is the commercial broadcast networks inserting their goals into the debate ‘system’ and their goals are not to educate the voters. Their goals are to get ratings points. So, they are setting up a structure that encourages the candidates to be as outrageous as possible in an effort to buy as many eyeballs on debate night as they can. The networks really don’t care how many voters are alienated by the process as long as they can convince a sizeable percentage to watch on the night that they own the air. So, by creating the ‘under-card’ and an artificial cutoff as measured by an arbitrary number measured by a series of national polls they are encouraging the candidates to ignore the issues that are important to the voters in the initial primary states and to focus on being as outrageous as possible to grab the attention of the shock jocks on the right. The Republican establishment may be ringing their hands in worry over how things are turning out with Trump et al but this was a foreseeable outcome when they turned over the reigns of the party to the consultant class led by Priebus with their close, incestuous ties to the right wing broadcast (aka con artist) machine.
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I’m not willing to count Rubio out yet and certainly not in favor of Bush.
In the crosstabs of the latest CNN poll: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2015/images/12/22/cnnpoll.pdf
Bush actually has a lower net favorability rating among all Americans (34% favorable, 57% unfavorable) than Trump (39% favorable (sheesh), 57% unfavorable). Rubio leads the pack at 46% favorable to 34% unfavorable and the trend over time for him has been to pick up more favorables than unfavorables as his “never heard of” numbers drop (Cruz too).
So… yeah, polls are a little silly right now but I think Rubio looks a little more compelling in the “billionaire primary” than Bush at this point.
All that said, I absolutely agree with you that if we make it to a brokered convention, Bush’s stock will soar.