[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Arles

One of the healthiest things for the Republican part would be for Trump to run and get destroyed. It would pretty much put to bed this fad and let the party regroup for 2020. If they slide in Cruz or Mitt through the side door, then all the Trumpites will cry foul (esp if they lose). Better to let him have his shot and put it to bed after he loses than to steal the chance from him and have four years of Trump anger to deal with.

I'm a northeast liberal, and it won't happen anyway, but I'd argue that it'd be Cruz running & getting destroyed. 70% of people 35 or younger support same-sex marriage, while abortion is not as drastic <35y/o's are also clearly pro-choice, marijuana I don't even need to dig up polls, and even on immigration we're significantly less anti-anything than older voters. It's not just a hardening by age, as the gun rights numbers show, with millennials actually inching up and supporting them more than the previous generation. The reactionaries of the world can keep tilting at windmills, but those fights (at least the first two) are over, and using those as your litmus tests and party tentpoles ensures the slow demise of the Republican Party. The religious right wing of the party has taken on outsized importance and it's led to a point where the Republicans are actually more intrusive than Democrats, and if it's Trump who tilts the balance back towards economically conservative, strong military, socially libertarian I'll love it. There are Republicans who run, and consistently win, in Massachusetts...

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Sure. It could happen. But it is not likely.

No one getting to 270 is great for establishment GOP. That part seems clear.

But I am not sure how a right wing third party helps that. It seems like instead of having states go 52-48 Hillary over Trump or 52-48 Trump over Hillary, you would have a lot of states go 52-28-20 Hillary or 48-30-22 Hillary.

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Nope.

With two GOP parties (effectively), what happens on a state-by-state basis is something like:

Clinton: 45%
Trump: 30%
Mitt: 20%

And then Clinton wins in a landslide.

The thing your IM misses is that aside from two states (Nebraska & Maine), states award their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.

Exactly. If Trump was a heavy favorite maybe you could try to run one, steal Utah/Wyoming/Idaho/Oklahoma, but even in Texas and most of the South Obama got around 40-41% in 2012 and it's hard to see any establishment 3rd-party candidate coming anywhere close to that number. If Trump is polling poorly, just run away from him and threaten voters that Hillary's agenda will be passed if there isn't a Republican majority in the Senate/House. If he's polling well (and I think he will), just shut up and realize the wave of new voters he's pulling in will likely bring you more R votes than people abstaining from voting as a whole due to dislike of the top of the ticket.