2015-2016 Republican Primary Season - Trump Courts the Conservatives

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

Hahaha amazing. I've always disliked Hilary on a visceral level, and I think it's primarily because she was clearly in a loveless marriage (for at least the last 15 years). It's more acute because I grew up under one, but I just can't trust or support someone who coldly makes the political decision to stay with their spouse even when they don't want to be in the same room. Since these things stopped being about competency or beliefs a long time ago someone might as well pur her on the spot about that.

Though, on the other hand, it seems apparent recently that Hillary and Bill have a lot more affection for each other than they have in years. Part of that may be a result of becoming grandparents, or perhaps Bill's health problems made both of them realize that maybe they don't have as much time as they thought they did, but I think it's quite obvious that they are more in love now than they have been since, at least, the early 90s.

[lighthousekeeper]

[Dutch]

Each one of those notes could easily have read, "Received all news cycle coverage"...so this isn't out of the realm of normal. The old adage, "Bad press is good press" comes to mind. You have to be imperfect all the time for this to work though. It's not like someone trying to be perfect made a gaffe...it's just a slew of "gaffes" that he owns each and every time. Fascinating stuff at how popularity is gained.

[NobodyHere]

And now Patacki is reportedly dropping out.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Trump gonna Trump.

Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE'S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2015

I don't think sexism is what Bill demonstrated a penchant for.

Too many letters

[Edward64]

I'm going to enjoy the battle royale between Trump & Hillary.

It'll be interesting to see what dirt both of them have on each other.

[Solecismic]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

And now Patacki is reportedly dropping out.

This is so surprising. It was just a matter of time before his campaign took off and reached 2% in a major national poll.

I think Pataki's departure leaves eleven in the race (Gilmore seems like he's out).

Obviously, the winners of the last two Iowa caucuses (cauci?), Santorum and Huckabee, are waiting for Iowa - or maybe they'll drop out right before Iowa if internal polling suggests an embarrassing result.

For a bunch of others - Kasich, Paul, Fiorina and Christie - they're hoping for lightning to strike in Iowa or New Hampshire, or it's over.

For Carson, I suspect disappointing results will take him out after New Hampshire as well - maybe even after Iowa.

The others I suspect are already setting up for the expensive and difficult run up to Super Tuesday.

[digamma]

So a post-New Hampshire field looks something like:

Trump
Cruz
Rubio
Bush
and maybe Christie/Paul/Fiorina

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Too many letters

this

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by digamma

So a post-New Hampshire field looks something like:

Trump
Cruz
Rubio
Bush
and maybe Christie/Paul/Fiorina

Christie is climbing in New Hampshire, so likely he'd be the 5th in that group... even if he doesn't do as well as he hoped in NH, he'd still have done better than Paul or Fiorina.

[flere-imsaho]

It's going to be funny if we have a reverse of 2012, whereby it's the GOP Establishment who runs through a number of "not-Trumps" along the way.

[QuikSand]

Top Carson staffers resign | TheHill

tick...
tick...
tick...

[digamma]

Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today. #RoseBowl

— Carly Fiorina (@CarlyFiorina) January 1, 2016

Oh, Carly...

[bhlloy]

Pander, pander, pander. I'm sure that's totally going to be what gets her campaign back on track in Iowa.

[digamma]

There's got to be a "Love my ____, but rooting for _____" meme developing somewhere, right?

[sabotai]

Comedy gold like that almost makes our 2 year long campaign season worth it.

[Solecismic]

Originally Posted by digamma

Love my alma mater, but rooting for a Hawkeyes win today. #RoseBowl

— Carly Fiorina (@CarlyFiorina) January 1, 2016

Oh, Carly...

She has never been to a sporting event in her entire life, has she? You can almost smell the desperation 500 miles away.

[ISiddiqui]

You would hope that someone on her staff would have been a sports fan. It's likely to affect her negatively in Iowa (Hawkeye fans would likely be, 'you can't abandon your team like that!!').

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

You would hope that someone on her staff would have been a sports fan. It's likely to affect her negatively in Iowa (Hawkeye fans would likely be, 'you can't abandon your team like that!!').

Especially after the Hawkeye's performance

#CarlyCurse

[Dutch]

That's awful.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

You would hope that someone on her staff would have been a sports fan. It's likely to affect her negatively in Iowa (Hawkeye fans would likely be, 'you can't abandon your team like that!!').

Luckily there's not fall to fall!

[Ben E Lou]

Trump ad that is evidently going to start running in IA and NH tomorrow. He appears to be staying on message.

[digamma]

The "until we figure out what is going on" line is just so amazing.

[Marc Vaughan]

I love the fact that he's decided Mexico is paying for the wall to stop immigration ... in other news I've decided that Mr Trump is going to pay my mortgage for me

[Sublime 2]

Trump is in my home town of Claremont, NH tonight. Quite the circus for this small city.

And with that, I'll probably never post again in a political thread.

[JPhillips]

52% of GOP primary voters say they're offended by bilingual phone menus, to 40% who say they aren't. This is actually a big dividing line in the GOP race. Among voters who aren't offended by having to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish, the race is tied with Rubio and Trump each at 19%, Bush at 14%, Kasich at 13%, Christie at 11%, and Cruz at just 6%. But among voters who are offended by such things, Trump leads with an overwhelming 36% to 13% for Cruz, 12% for Christie, 11% for Rubio, 8% for Kasich, and just 6% for Bush.

SMH

[panerd]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

SMH

I noticed you left off the initial question off your post (seems to cut across the extremes of both sides of the coin)...

Offended by Bilingual
Menus Yes/No

Base
Ideology Very liberal Somewhat liberal Moderate Somewhat conservative Very conservative
Offended 61% 42% 39% 58% 61%

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/p...e_NH_10616.pdf

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

My remaining Carsonites are mostly people who got behind him very early & just haven't quite shaken it off yet. Pre-Trump mega-emergence basically. I think Cruz would get the bulk of them but Trump would capture a decent portion.

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Interesting. Maybe it's just my contacts. Every single person I know who is still with Carson is the sort of person for whom decorum is very important. Trump acts "too common" for them. (I've heard/read that precise phrase several times about Trump, always from Carson supporters.) He's very popular with the Cotillion Evangelical types that are probably a bit over-represented in both my social life and social media. I don't really know anyone who doesn't fit that mold who is a Carson supporter, so perhaps I'm projecting that on all Carson supporters.

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Eh, you could combine Carson & Huck and they're still an also ran at this point.

I'd put the Carson/Trump crossover at more like 30-40 percent in the case of a Carson implosion though, the backers I see of the former have Trump as their 2nd choice pretty often.

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

To some degree.

If Trump somehow implodes*, Cruz is the clear #1 beneficiary, with everyone else being also-rans.
If Cruz implodes, I'd expect his supporters to split maybe 60 Trump/35 Carson/5 Other.
I see Trump getting very few Carson supporters. I'd expect to see those go to Cruz, and maybe to Huckabee if he's still around. Seems like a very different crowd and style.



*--Can that even happen at this point? At least among the people behind him, he seems to be at dead girl/live boy level.

Some actual numbers on this from NH.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by panerd

I noticed you left off the initial question off your post (seems to cut across the extremes of both sides of the coin)...

Offended by Bilingual
Menus Yes/No

Base
Ideology Very liberal Somewhat liberal Moderate Somewhat conservative Very conservative
Offended 61% 42% 39% 58% 61%

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/p...e_NH_10616.pdf

Unless I'm completely misreading this, though, that result is from the poll of 515 likely Republican primary voters, of which only 5% identified themselves as Very or somewhat liberal.

[ISiddiqui]

I find Huckabee's second choices to be quite interesting - 68% for Kasich and 32% for Trump. Though Gilmore's second choice is amusing 100% for Cruz, though it makes sense when you consider it's likely just 1 person .

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Unless I'm completely misreading this, though, that result is from the poll of 515 likely Republican primary voters, of which only 5% identified themselves as Very or somewhat liberal.

Indeed... there is also a lot of interesting stuff in that poll. Trump leads with 29%, but 73% of the voters identify themselves as NOT Tea Party (it figures being New Hampshire) and 78% are NOT evangelical. So even in that context, Trump is still leading pretty bit (Rubio was in 2nd place at 15%).

[panerd]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Unless I'm completely misreading this, though, that result is from the poll of 515 likely Republican primary voters, of which only 5% identified themselves as Very or somewhat liberal.

Yes. My point being if we are to take the poll at face value the two extremes of those polled (very liberal and very conservative) are the most offended. While those in the middle likely are closer to the nationwide average. (one could debate what very liberal means for a likely GOP voters and the validity of their answers but then that also would question the validity of the Trump part as well wouldn't it?)

Qualifier: I am far from a Trump supporter. My rankings would go Paul, Clinton, 3rd party candidate, not voting, Trump. However those poll questions seem pretty skewed to create the "AHA! Trump supporters are..." moment where the Democratic questions are pretty basic and don't get into Obama taking away guns and the Oregon protesters. Why not have a leading question on the Democratic poll side like "Does a candidate having a husband impeached effect you voting or something controversial about BLM?

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Unless I'm completely misreading this, though, that result is from the poll of 515 likely Republican primary voters, of which only 5% identified themselves as Very or somewhat liberal.

Yeah, look at question 32.

Would you describe yourself as very liberal,
somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat
conservative, or
very conservative?
1%
Very liberal
......................................................
4%
Somewhat liberal
............................................
33%
Moderate
.........................................................
36%
Somewhat conservative
..................................
26%
Very conservative

[digamma]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I find Huckabee's second choices to be quite interesting - 68% for Kasich and 32% for Trump. Though Gilmore's second choice is amusing 100% for Cruz, though it makes sense when you consider it's likely just 1 person .

I like the undecideds. "I don't know who my first choice is but I know Jeb is #2!!!"

[JPhillips]

I think a lot of GOP voters would agree that Jeb is number 2.

[JPhillips]

Originally Posted by panerd

Qualifier: I am far from a Trump supporter. My rankings would go Paul, Clinton, 3rd party candidate, not voting, Trump. However those poll questions seem pretty skewed to create the "AHA! Trump supporters are..." moment where the Democratic questions are pretty basic and don't get into Obama taking away guns and the Oregon protesters. Why not have a leading question on the Democratic poll side like "Does a candidate having a husband impeached effect you voting or something controversial about BLM?

Their business model is certainly about asking "shocking" questions to get publicity for their polls.

[digamma]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

I think a lot of GOP voters would agree that Jeb is number 2.

That's fine and I don't disagree, but by definition an undecided voter is considering more than one candidate. So these folks would rank Jeb ahead of the loser in their single elimination voting tournament. That's what I find amusing.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Some actual numbers on this from NH.

what's the source of this poll?

[stevew]

Originally Posted by digamma

That's fine and I don't disagree, but by definition an undecided voter is considering more than one candidate. So these folks would rank Jeb ahead of the loser in their single elimination voting tournament. That's what I find amusing.

I think he was making a poop joke.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

what's the source of this poll?

Same one as above. Someone gave a link to it.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by stevew

I think he was making a poop joke.

I sure hope so

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by panerd

Yes. My point being if we are to take the poll at face value the two extremes of those polled (very liberal and very conservative) are the most offended. While those in the middle likely are closer to the nationwide average. (one could debate what very liberal means for a likely GOP voters and the validity of their answers but then that also would question the validity of the Trump part as well wouldn't it?)

I don't think you can make this conclusion. Only 5% of those polled (and, again, all were "likely Republican primary voters") view themselves as very or somewhat liberal. Only 1% of those polled (so, 5 people) view themselves as "very liberal".

I think the conclusion that you can make is that 61% of likely Republican primary voters who also consider themselves very liberal are very offended by this. But you can also make the following conclusions with the same level of certainty:

1. Those 5 likely Republican primary voters who view themselves as "very liberal" are delusional.

2. Those 5 likely Republican primary voters who view themselves as "very liberal" pressed 1 when they meant to press 5.

[nol]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I don't think you can make this conclusion. Only 5% of those polled (and, again, all were "likely Republican primary voters") view themselves as very or somewhat liberal. Only 1% of those polled (so, 5 people) view themselves as "very liberal".

I think the conclusion that you can make is that 61% of likely Republican primary voters who also consider themselves very liberal are very offended by this. But you can also make the following conclusions with the same level of certainty:

1. Those 5 likely Republican primary voters who view themselves as "very liberal" are delusional.

2. Those 5 likely Republican primary voters who view themselves as "very liberal" pressed 1 when they meant to press 5.

3. Some of the 5 people are not regarding the survey with the utmost importance.

4. Some of the 5 people got partway through the survey, decided they didn't want to answer all of the questions and tried to exit, received a prompt that said they had to select an answer for every question, and clicked 1 on everything they had left to get it over with.

[aston217]

Do we hope the Republicans settle down, or -- things being what they are -- is it better for a Trump or Cruz to actually secure the nomination and force America to have a real national conversation about who we want to be?

I don't want to be beholden to one party. I think it weakens our republic to not have options. But damn. Dat Republican Rhetoric.

[nol]

Originally Posted by aston217

Do we hope the Republicans settle down, or -- things being what they are -- is it better for a Trump or Cruz to actually secure the nomination and force America to have a real national conversation about who we want to be?

I don't want to be beholden to one party. I think it weakens our republic to not have options. But damn. Dat Republican Rhetoric.

I think it would just be a conversation about rhetoric. Imagine where Trump would be polling if he had the exact same policy proposals but just turned the rhetoric down a notch some places along the way.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by nol

I think it would just be a conversation about rhetoric. Imagine where Trump would be polling if he had the exact same policy proposals but just turned the rhetoric down a notch some places along the way.

He'd be lost in the morass of mediocre cowards with the rest of 'em.

Your point is well taken (I think) but just seeing someone willing to say what so desperately needs saying has an amazing impact.

[digamma]

Originally Posted by stevew

I think he was making a poop joke.

I actually considered that but thought it would be Jeb is a number 2.

[AlexB]

Genuine question here: does Trump stand a chance of winning the nomination and the presidency?

The line "You know what a gun-free zone is for a sicko? That's bait." is horrific.

No acknowledgement of any mass shooting problem, no effort to try and either stop the 'sicko' getting a gun or treatment, no acknowledgement that the vast majority of the rest of the developed world manages just fine without guns in schools.

Surely there's enough rational folk in the US for this bandwagon to stop?

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by AlexB

Genuine question here: does Trump stand a chance of winning the nomination and the presidency?

I think you have to say that anyone who's leading the national polls for the nomination in January has a chance of winning the nomination.

Conventional wisdom on the general election is that it would be very difficult for him to win as he'd have to pick up independent moderates (and/or GOP or even Democrat moderates) to do so.

[Coffee Warlord]

Once upon a time, I would have said, "No Fucking Way In Hell".

Now? Who the hell knows. How this guy continues to get traction mystifies me. Against a very polarizing Hilary, who the hell knows.