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Cruz is out?

123 replies

CheerfulYank · 04/05/2016 01:43

So Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee.

Is this real life? Is this my country?

What is happening? I know one person who supports Trump. ONE.

OP posts:
claig · 08/05/2016 08:22

Evangelicals stayed at home for Romney because he was just an Establishment crony, but I think they will back Trump because they are "mad as hell" just like the Republican base. The majority of Cruz supporters will switch to Trump. The establishment ones won't but they are a small minority and Trump will eventually marginalise the whole lot of them, because it is now the Trump Party and not their party anymore.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

When evangelicals realise that the choice is between Hillary and Trump, they will make the right choice.

Mistigri · 08/05/2016 08:28

It's a myth that evangelicals stayed at home for Romney. Even conservatives know this:

www.redstate.com/dan_mclaughlin/2015/11/26/myth-4-million-conservative-voters-stayed-home-2012/

Romney in 2012 got a million more votes than McCain in 2008, and only a million less than Bush in 2004.

claig · 08/05/2016 08:42

"When you zoom in a bit, you find that 21% of self-identified, white, born-again, evangelical Christians voted for President Obama in 2012.
•You’d think this decrease in evangelical votes for Obama would have helped win the race for Romney, but it didn’t.
•78% of evangelical Christians voted for Romney in 2012. Yes, this was up from the 74% that McCain received in 2008, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
•To put it more precisely, about 5 million fewer evangelicals voted for Obama in 2012 than in 2008. Meanwhile, some 4.7 million more evangelicals voted for Romney than voted for McCain. Yet Romney still couldn’t win.

In 2012, white, born-again, evangelical Christians represented 26% of the total vote for president, according to the exit polls.
•In other words, we saw no change at all in the size of the evangelical vote, –no net gain, certainly no surge, no record evangelical turnout, despite expectations of this.

There were concerns by a number of Christian leaders going into the 2012 elections that Romney’s Mormonism might suppress evangelical and conservative voter turnout.
3.The Romney campaign worked hard to not only to win the evangelical vote but to turn out more evangelicals to the polls — but it did not work.
4.Despite Obama’s pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-religious freedom record — a record presumably abhorrent both to evangelicals and conservative Catholics — Romney simply was not able to cut deeply enough into Obama’s evangelical and Catholic vote.
5.If Romney had been able win over significantly more evangelicals – and/or dramatically increased evangelical turnout in the right states – he would have won the election handily.
6.It is stunning to think that more than 6 million self-described evangelical Christians would vote for a President who supports abortion on demand; supported the same-sex marriage ballot initiatives that successed in Maryland, Maine and Washington; and was on the cover of Newsweek as America’s “first gay president.” Did these self-professed believers surrender their Biblical convictions in the voting booth, or did they never really have deep Biblical convictions on the critical issues to begin with?
7.Whatever their reasons, these so-called evangelicals doomed Romney and a number of down-ballot candidates for the House and Senate."

flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/more-than-6-million-self-described-evangelicals-voted-for-obama-why-what-else-do-the-exit-polls-tell-us-about-how-christians-voted/

As Trump says, Romney "choked"and should have easily beaten an unpopular candidate. The Republican base did not come out for him in big enough numbers because he couldn't energise them as he was essentially an Establishment crony who was in fact quite liberal unlike the base. The Establishment got rid of Ron Paul and put one of their usual "safe pair of hands" liberals up for the Republican base to vote for and they didn't come out in large enough numbers for the crony.

claig · 08/05/2016 08:47

Trump is a real candidate, not a Romney phoney, and Trump will energize the entire Republican base apart from Lindsey Graham, a gaggle of neocons and Establishment hangers-on. The turnout will be enormous. The entire country will be energized and the entire world will look on and the wold "leaders" will be praying that Trump is defeated so that they are spared.

"Trump vs. Clinton is going to motivate record turnout on both sides of the aisle"

www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11148720/trump-clinton-record-turnout

Mistigri · 08/05/2016 09:57

There's no reason to believe that all evangelicals are republicans Claig. In fact many evangelicals are black, and vote democratic.

The evangelicals that Trump would need to win over are a subset: the most socially conservative, most religious White evangelicals, who habitually vote for republican candidates, but who may abstain this time, or vote for another candidate. The one thing that is consistently shown by polling is that the more religiously devout an individual is, the less likely s/he is to support Trump.

claig · 08/05/2016 10:12

'In fact many evangelicals are black, and vote democratic.'

True.

'The one thing that is consistently shown by polling is that the more religiously devout an individual is, the less likely s/he is to support Trump.'

Then why did Trump beat the pastor's son, Cruz, in South Carolina which was expected to be a win for Cruz?

Most evangelicals will prefer a Republican to liberal Clinton.

"According to Pew, half of white evangelical voters (52%) think Trump would be a good/great president, while 3 in 10 think he would be a poor/terrible president (29%).
...
Overall, far more evangelicals view Trump as “very unfavorable” than “very favorable,” a new Barna Group survey reports. Researchers found a 38 percentage point difference between the extreme ends of Trump’s favorability spectrum.

The only candidate who scored more unfavorably with evangelicals was Hillary Clinton (-61), while Ben Carson (+35), Marco Rubio (+27), and Ted Cruz (+26) all scored favorably in evangelical eyes.
...
When Barna asked its 869 survey respondents to choose their favorite candidate, evangelicals who identified as Republicans split between Cruz (38%) and Carson (35%), trailed by Rubio (14%) and Trump (11%). Practicing Christians also chose Cruz first (30%), followed by Carson (20%), Trump (18%), and Rubio (15%).

Viewed almost every other way, however, voters favored Trump. He came in first among non-evangelical born-again Christians (not the first time the groups have split), notional Christians, all born-again Christians, all non-born-again Christians, Protestants, and Catholics.

www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/february/8-charts-evangelicals-vote-donald-trump-super-tuesday.html

At the end of the day, Trump vs Clinton will mean that most evangelicals will go for Trump to protect them from left wing Clinton and her political correctness, assault on the First and Second Amendments and attempt to change America forever with Supreme Court nominations.

Mistigri · 08/05/2016 12:52

'The one thing that is consistently shown by polling is that the more religiously devout an individual is, the less likely s/he is to support Trump.'

Then why did Trump beat the pastor's son, Cruz, in South Carolina which was expected to be a win for Cruz?

I don't understand why you think these two things are inconsistent. Cruz has (had) limited appeal outside a narrow range of very conservative, religious voters. This is why it was hard for the GOP to promote him as the "anyone but trump" candidate - because for many voters, he was even less appealing than Trump.

In the primaries, picking up the support of the 20-30% most conservative/ devout voters wasn't enough to win, no one argues with that. But this group is still numerically large, and will be difficult to win over by a candidate who is in favour of abortion, is crude and disrespectful towards women, and whose religious and conservative credentials do not stand up to close scrutiny. Some of them may well line up behind Trump, on the grounds that Hillary is worse. Some won't. At the moment, it looks possible that quite a signficant number won't and it could easily cost Trump several million evangelical votes.

If both the right and the left of the party refuse to hold their noses and vote for him, then he is toast. We'll have to see how it plays out in the coming days and weeks, nothing is set in stone yet.

claig · 08/05/2016 13:01

'I don't understand why you think these two things are inconsistent'

Trump beat Cruz among evangelicals in South Carolina. It wasn't meant to be that way and it surprised the pundits.

'If both the right and the left of the party refuse to hold their noses and vote for him, then he is toast.'

Yes, but that won't happen. Just as all the pundits were wrong about Trump so far, they are also wrong that Hillary will beat him. World "leaders" are worried.

mathanxiety · 10/05/2016 08:42

I suspect evangelicals and fundamentalists will stay home.
Trump is not an ideological conservative (if he is a conservative at all) and they are.

Trump is showing signs of ditching everything that Paul Ryan and the militant ideologue/Tea Party wing stands for, including opposition to abortion and the savaging of social security and Medicare. He has recently made noises about raising the minimum wage and raising taxes for the wealthy and has said he has the right to change his mind on issues. He could appoint literally anyone to the Supreme Court. He knows evangelicals (who tend to like Ryan, et al) will not vote for Clinton anyway so losing them won't hurt him if he can pick up votes elsewhere, which he knows he can do because he has done it in the primaries. He also knows there are women out there who are not wild about Clinton.

My guess is he will throw any smidgeon of ideological conservatism he may have under the bus in favour of courting the women's vote, which is by no means cornered by Clinton. This means middle class 'soccer mom' type women as well as blue collar women.

Imo he will not come out against abortion again (he did so very clumsily early in the primaries) and unless public opinion on abortion shifts to greatly oppose it, he will flow with the tide. This will keep evangelicals home. They are issue voters and opposition to abortion is one thing that has made Republican candidates attractive to them even though most of the Republican candidates apart from Rick Santorum are far to the left of their ideal. They don't care about Mammon as much as evolution taught in schools, gay marriage, etc. This was one of the things that turned them off Romney -- he came across as lukewarm on these issues.

It won't matter if evangelicals vote for a libertarian or anyone else -- as long as they don't vote for Hillary Clinton (and I think many of them won't) they are effectively just noises offstage. Trump's ideas on foreign policy eat into libertarian land, so he may even appeal to more cerebral libertarians (who can pick out various foreign countries on a globe).

He seems to have more appeal for people who are wishy washy as far as religion goes, but who are generally poor, hacked off and strident -- his values are very secular and his appeal is to folks who are also largely secular. Ryan apologised a while back for calling vast swathes of American voters 'takers', probably too late. Ryan's remark came in the wake of Mitt Romney's terrible 47% foot in mouth incident a few years before. Both soundbites insulted millions of Americans who probably rightly saw in them the appalling hubris of the rich (and not very compassionate when it all boiled down). I suspect very much that many Trump voters have not voted before and might have voted for him if he had been a Democrat too and they could register as such.

He is much more of an anti-gun control Republican than one aligned with any other issue conservatives tend to come out to vote on. People who are opposed to gun control are not necessarily evangelicals, or even Republicans in some parts of the US. There are lots of people in blue states who hunt and own guns and for whom shooting is a part of life and they may not have enjoyed being cast as enemy number one by the gun control lobby (after all, everyone knows it's only the criminals who own guns who create the gun related problems besetting America). He is also very much wrapped in the flag. Hyped up patriotism comes in all shapes and sizes. The anti-immigrant stance is going to attract many union votes that the Democrats can usually depend on, and union votes are well organised and disciplined.

I think in November there will be several dogfights, and unlikely swing states will emerge. These will be states where Cruz won by large margins -- Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, where (usually Mormon) Republicans see themselves as what George W. Bush called 'compassionate conservatives'. Trump's brand is the opposite of this. Certainly there will be many voters in Texas who won't feel they owe Trump anything. Wisconsin is the home of Scott Walker and Paul Ryan. Any state where libertarians tend to be strong seems to be anti-Trump. All the states that Cruz won will be most interesting to watch in November even if the GOP rallies around Trump, and that is not a given because in the long run they need to hold onto the evangelical base that Trump may not appeal to.

Then there will be swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa. Iowa will probably go to Clinton (Trump lost there in the primary). New Hampshire may go to Trump despite being the home of Sanders. It will be a bitter battle. Virginia may go to Clinton especially if she picks Missouri native and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her VP. Ohio may go to Trump lots of disaffected voters there. Florida is Jeb Bush land and also has a high hispanic population so it may well go to Clinton. Nevada and Colorado are probably Trump territory immigration and gun control may prove to be galvanising issues.

Evangelicals who may have voted for Trump in South Carolina may have been attracted to his anti-Muslim and strong national defence position. SC is one of those states with high levels of enlistment in the armed forces at enlisted (Pfc) level. The only issue Trump holds dear to his heart that might attract evangelicals is patriotic/anti-Muslim policies. This may have attracted some.

But evangelicals are the kind of people who see events in apocalyptic terms and maybe they will let history write itself and await the resulting smiting with fortitude. Trump won just about one third of the vote so the other two thirds who voted in SC opted for someone else. His support may or may not have come from evangelicals. It may well have been a factor that SC allows all registered voters to participate in the primary, and you don't have to declare any party affiliation to get a party ballot. Overall I don't think you can say that 'evangelicals supported Trump in SC'

claig · 10/05/2016 09:12

'so he may even appeal to more cerebral libertarians'

Yes, Lew Rockwell likes Trump, but Ron Paul, himself, does not and says he won't vote for Trump.

Trump won't be able to go easy on the Second Amendemnt before the election or he will lose lots of voters. What he does after he wins is anyone's guess.

At least 50% of evangelicals think Trump would be a good president. at the moment, Trump is facing a revolt among particularly some Southern baptists preachers like Moore who oppose him, but Trump is on th attack against him and I think Trump may beat him. Trump has a loyal following and it will split the opposition towards him and could harm them.

Paul Ryan has already said he will step down as Chairman for Cleveland if Trump asks him. Palin said that Ryan is effectively toast and that she will campaign against him, but Trump has thrown an olive branch to Ryan by saying that Palin was acting on her own without his knowledge.

Mistigri · 10/05/2016 10:21

He has recently made noises about raising the minimum wage and raising taxes for the wealthy and has said he has the right to change his mind on issues.

He's been in a bit of a muddle on both those issues in the last few days, though. He's now saying he will abolish the federal minimum wage and leave to to the states to set it at a level which will attract investment (this may not be too damaging because I'm not sure Trump voters are bright enough to realise that this is basically proposing a race to the bottom), and on taxes for the rich he's said that he will both raise them and reduce them. In fact Nordquist - who for Claig's benefit is one of his higher profile republican supporters and who helped write his tax policy - appeared to publicly rebuke him on this issue.

claig · 10/05/2016 10:39

'He's now saying he will abolish the federal minimum wage and leave to to the states'

This is Trump's classic position on all issues he doesn't want to take a position on, like transgender bathrooms etc. He kicks it down to the state level and says it has nothing to do with him. It is classic Trump.

'appeared to publicly rebuke him on this issue'

Trump plays to the crowd. He intends to win. Nordquist will be overruled if Trump believes it is electorally advantageous. It is teh Trump show and no one else's.

Mistigri · 10/05/2016 10:53

Well, it's a good thing a lot of trump voters are stupid then. Or some of them might realise that there are a number of states that have a mijimum wage below the federal minimum. And others which set no minimum at all.

claig · 10/05/2016 11:05

Trump is all about "competition". He will let the states compete on tax and minimum wages etc. Don't forget that the Establishment conservatives don't want a minimum wage at all. Trump will allow a minimum wage if states want it, so that will appeal to Bernie voters who can vote in state representatives to push for that policy. Trump will not take a position on it that stops it happening, it will be up to the states and their voters. It's classic Trump.

claig · 10/05/2016 11:10

Sorry, there is already a federal minimum wage. This is all about whether it should be increased.

claig · 10/05/2016 16:06

'Evangelicals raise hell over Trump's VP search

Movement leaders threaten to sit this cycle out if Trump's running mate doesn't win them over.'

Evangelicals are starting to rebel against Trump. they don't trust he is conservative enough. They want him to pick a good VP. They are important because there are a lot of them.

Peronally, I think Mike Huckabee would be a fantastic choice - he has the Christian credentials as well as having a sense of humour and supporting blue collar workers with the common touch. He gets on well with people in government but is not Establishment.

www.politico.com/story/2016/05/evangelicals-to-trump-vp-is-the-key-222987

mathanxiety · 10/05/2016 22:14

Competition really is a race to the bottom where minimum wage is concerned. It's the same theory on which 'Right to Work' policies are based.

If Trump is serious about courting the union vote (and he should be, because it is a bloc that will otherwise vote Democratic and its allegiance is not a foregone conclusion in this election) he will have to say something substantive and credible in favour of raising it.

The evangelicals are trying to get Trump's ear and convince him that they are essential to hopes of a win. However, where else are they going to go? If he can appeal to gun owners and people inclined to favour an end to illegal immigration and tough trade deals with China and other disaffected people he won't necessarily need them. If he can poach people who might vote for Clinton he could make up for the loss of lots of evangelicals. If he can bring in even a few million voters from the 90 million eligible voters who stayed home last time, then he also might win. They are largely unknown quantities, and it's likely that his polling teams are probing or have already probed what might draw them to the voting booths in November.

claig · 11/05/2016 03:16

Mike Huckabee was on Fox and said that if Romney would have won 4% more evangelicals, he would have been president. Apparently, a lot of them sat it out.

Huckabee thinks Trump will win the election. It will all be about turnout. The left will have to get everyone out and a lot of them don't like Clinton which is why they have to paint Trump in a terrible light to push up turnout.

All Trump needs is to hold what Romney had plus get an increase among evangelicals and a small increase among African-Americans and he is in and the world "leaders" won't know what has happened to their world.

mathanxiety · 11/05/2016 03:26

I think the evangelicals are inflating their own importance in hopes that candidates will all pander to them. I suspect there are many more moderate Republicans who despair of the way the party is in thrall to that particular lobby.

Trump will of course have an opponent in November, and no doubt she will be doing her utmost to win too. This will involve getting out the Democrat base vote, attracting new voters, perhaps winning over Republicans who can't stand Trump and have been completely appalled by the primary spectacle, and seeking to drive a wedge between Trump and the evangelical lobby. Or between Trump and the big business lobby. That won't be difficult, because as current infighting in the GOP shows, there are major fault lines that can be exploited.

The convention isn't a done deal yet either.

claig · 11/05/2016 03:38

If Trump wins the states that Romney won and wins just Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, then Trump wins. If he doesn't win all of those, he will have to flip some of the rustbelt states.

I can't see any Republicans voting for Hillary. The left-right divide is huge for conservatives. Social issues are key to conservatives and I don't think they trust the left' on issues like transgender bathrooms etc. I think the left may have used that to energise their base, but it will also energise the conservative base.

claig · 11/05/2016 03:48

According to Quinnipiac, Trump is ahead in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania on the economy and honesty and integrity and Clinton is ahead on foreign policy (amazingly enough).

The economy really is the key issue.

Apparently it is looking possible that Bernie might even win California and Doug Schoen, a former advisr to Bill Clinton, says that there is panic in Hillary's camp as they lack a strategy to deal with Trump.

mathanxiety · 11/05/2016 04:30

There are Republicans in prosperous collar counties of large cities that can often go either way. They are not evangelical voters by a long stretch. Many of them appreciate having Mexican landscapers getting their yards done in half an hour and charging buttons, or Polish ladies in to clean their McMansions once a week, again for buttons.

There really isn't much to choose from between Republicans and Democrats in many areas. There really isn't a clear left/right divide. Fox News in my viewing area is noticeably less rabid than Fox News in the city my exH came from. I shudder to think how awful it must be in places like Charleston, SC.

There is a left leaning cohort that has voted for Bernie Sanders, but they are not traditional Democrat voters.

Mistigri · 11/05/2016 06:23

it's likely that his polling teams are probing or have already probed what might draw them to the voting booths in November.

I'm dubious about this - one of the features of the Trump campaign has been a lack of conventional political organisation. The white supremacist delegate fiasco is more evidence that his campaign team is out of its depth. That's just gifting the Clinton new attack ads - "Make America white again!"

Trump himself on the other hand does have a demagogue's instinctive understanding of the emotional appeals that might get non-voters voting. His difficulty will be in how he manages to appeal to particular groups without repelling others.

The minimum wage question is a good example of a policy question where different groups of Trump supporters hold directly opposing views, and where he is consequently finding it difficult to work out what position will win him the most votes. As the election nears, and he is forced to take more specific policy positions, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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