The Washington Post has the most promising GOP poll numbers yet…for the Democrats.
Businessman Donald Trump surged into the lead for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, with almost twice the support of his closest rival, just as he ignited a new controversy after making disparaging remarks about Sen. John McCain’s Vietnam War service, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Support for Trump fell sharply on the one night that voters were surveyed following those comments. Telephone interviewing for the poll began Thursday, and most calls were completed before the news about the remarks was widely reported.
Although the sample size for the final day was small, the decline was statistically significant. Still, it is difficult to predict what could happen to Trump’s support in the coming days and weeks as the controversy plays out.
Even with the drop in support on the final night of the survey, Trump was the favorite of 24 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. That is the highest percentage and biggest lead recorded by any GOP candidate this year in Post-ABC News polls and marks a sixfold increase in his support since late May, shortly before he formally joined the race.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who announced his candidacy a week ago, is in second place, at 13 percent, followed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush, at 12 percent. Walker’s support is strongest among those who describe themselves as “very conservative.”
Trump getting close to Cole’s Number (27%) here because he’s saying exactly what the lizard-brain base wants him to say: I’ve Got Mine, Screw The Rest Of You. It’s working.
Yes, he’s going to take a hit for his McCain remarks but eventually that’s going to be a point in his favor. The guy is unrestrained red-state, red-meat id and the mob loves him.
Trump is who the Republican party really is: a horrifically racist rich bully who does not give a damn who he steps on to get more. He’s not leaving the race. The donors can’t cut him off. The party can’t censure him. He simply is, barbaric yawp and all. Besides, El Rushbo is rallying the troops to defend him.
Human political metastasis personified is a strange thing to watch, but it does explain the hair.
Kylroy
The 27% number was intended to reflect the crazification factor of the population as a whole – this poll is just Repubs and leans-Repub. Although, it would be hilarious if it has a fractal quality – 27% of Repubs support Trump, 27% of Trump supporters are admitted fascists, 27% of the fascists have offensive tattoos…
catclub
Could someone explain the title? I can only think of a happy cat.
eric
Here is the thing. Even when trump implodes, he has shown the marginal players how to (potentially) get traction; thus, this wonderful era of hateful rhetoric will continue until a Clown is crowned King (no Queens, so sorry Carla).
sparrow
I know the media and a certain section of the left blogosphere really want us to take Trump seriously… but I just can’t. There’s just no way this guy wins. Period.
MattF
Well, ‘statistically significant’ and ‘small sample’ are mutually exclusive. Also, polling doesn’t work very well these days, so the whole exercise is suspect.
AdamK
Like catclub, I do not understand the headline. I am old.
Boots Day
It’s odd to me that supposedly intelligent pundits say that Trump knows he can’t win and that he’s just in this to build his brand. Trump obviously thinks he can win – he’s got quite possibly the biggest ego in the whole US of A, and doesn’t think there’s anything he can’t do.
It’s also obvious to me that he doesn’t believe (or maybe just doesn’t care about) half the stuff he says, and is just fantastically good at gaining attention to himself. He’s gone back and forth on pretty much all his social-issues stances over the course of his public life.
RollSound
@catclub:
PMURT spelled backwards is TRUMP.
catclub
@RollSound: Thanks! Simple once you see it.
JPL
My analysis for what it’s worth, is that the RNC is going after him. Since they control the media talking points, Trump can’t survive another two months. The only thing that can save him, is him self. He can’t prevent vile from coming out of his mouth, so that is not going to happen.
JPL
@catclub: Now try to pronounce it.
Germy Shoemangler
Saying his name backwards three times summons the demon?
Boots Day
There is a sizable part of the Republican Party that values vile above all else.
Belafon
@JPL: Except, from what I’ve read and seen, both Rush and FOX are currently backing him. Maybe FOX is doing it to give him a higher platform to fall from.
pamelabrown53
What I’d like more discussion about is the republican establishment’s hypocrisy. I thought that Jeb Bush’s letter to the swiftboater thanking him for “standing up to Kerry” for his brother was beyond despicable.
dmsilev
@Germy Shoemangler: No, but if you can trick him into saying his name backwards, his hairpiece will return to its native dimension.
catclub
I am not sure how much the crazyfication factor applies fractally, ie in each subgroup. Romney typically had about 27% the whole way through. When 61% of GOP voters still think there were/are WMD’s in Iraq, That should work out to 27%.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kylroy: The original piece on the crazification factor explains that it is fractal.
catclub
@dmsilev: Very ugly string theory.
Rex Tremendae
“I’ve Got Mine, Screw The Rest Of You.”
Except that Trump’s support comes from less educated and less wealthy individuals. Those who really got theirs don’t want much to do with Trump.
Joel
Scott Walker = fiscal responsibility.
catclub
@JPL: Like I wrote up top, I hear a cat when it kind of purrs and seems to be asking a question at the same time.
Germy Shoemangler
@Belafon:
I just feel like they want a “libtard democrap” in 2016. Because it’s so much easier to heckle the opposition from the sidelines (“If WE were in charge, you wouldn’t have all these problems!”) than it is to defend their own winning side (Pay no attention to the whining crybabies! Things are better!”)
I remember hearing an old recording of Lush Rimbaugh when W was in charge, and he was exclaiming “Leave it to the liberal democrats to find CLOUD in every SILVER LINING!” He was working hard telling his listeners everything is fine!
Too much work. And your viewers might see the big lie.
KG
@Kylroy: the crazification factor has shown some fractal qualities in the past. but that might have just been coincidence.
i’m curious to see what my reflexively Republican family thinks of him going forward. part of me wants to see a brokered convention, just because of all the things on the political “stuff that will never happen” list, it’s the only one left besides a woman as president (African American president, impeachment, split popular vote/electoral college).
catclub
@Joel: Now that is a great return on investment!
John Oliver will be beating his head on his desk.
shell
Sweet Jesus, I just logged on and two whole blog posts about Trump. Cant go near cable news with constant jabber about him and his supposed poll numbers.
Cant we just shut up about this clown for five minutes..
dmsilev
@sparrow: He can’t win. It’s pretty hard to see a path to the nomination, but even if you allow that, he’s by far the weakest general-election candidate among the vaguely-plausible candidates.
Barry
@MattF: “Well, ‘statistically significant’ and ‘small sample’ are mutually exclusive. Also, polling doesn’t work very well these days, so the whole exercise is suspect.”
Speaking as a professional statistician, no, they are not.
They don’t tend to hang out together a lot, but they do meet for hook-ups on occasion.
KG
@shell:
sorry, that is neither how the internet, cable news, or even talk radio work.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kylroy:
Not… really. The idea is that no idea is so insane that 27% of people won’t support it, but those 27% are a different 27% for every insane position. So, you’re going to see a lot of ‘27% of this sub-population support this position that does not apply to the outside population’, or ‘27% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats support Crazy Nonpartisan Thing.’
Joel
@Barry: Significance is kind of beside the point, here. Yes, it tests the hypothesis that Trump’s comments on McCain would hurt him in the immediate aftermath, but you don’t need polls to prove that. The real issue is; what is the predictive value of a single day change in a multi-day polling sample? I would say very little.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
A six foot drop isn’t enough?
Amir Khalid
I reckon der Donald lacks the discipline, the politicking chops, and the organisational skills to make it to the nomination. In fact, I expect him to fail on at least two of those fronts by then. And I rather fancy that a lack of competent grassroots organisation will contribute to his eventual downfall, as much as anything impolitic that he might say.
Kropadope
I always understood the crazification factor to be 27% of the whole electorate. Given that half the electorate is Republican and assuming (I would say fairly) that a majority of the CF vote can be attributed to the Rs, is it possible that we could see Trump get 30, 40%? More?
BR
@Belafon:
This is my suspicion. They know he’s peaking too early, and are happy to help his rise and fall — makes for more eyeballs and they still get an electable candidate afterwards.
rikyrah
Yep.
All this.
Belafon
@Roger Moore: A six foot drop might mean he breaks a leg, but he can return later (as an independent candidate). He needs to be at a hight to kill him off permanently.
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
@AdamK:
@RollSound:
If I were a cartoonist and wanted to draw someone farting, I’d have little “pmurt pmurt pmurt” sound balloons coming out of his ass.
chopper
@dmsilev:
that’s some win right there.
Cervantes
@MattF:
Not exactly.
mattH
It has nothing to do with a Cole, it’s from this post at Kung Fu Monkey back in 2005.
I find the post before this one interesting too. My father in law is plastering the book of face with Trump shit. Only a few months ago we almost had him converted to hate the Republicans because of how they were trying to take away his insurance he got through the ACA. But Trump appeals to the anti-business leaning groups in his party quite well, It helps when you keep hammering on how many times Trump has filed bankruptcy though. Shuts my FIL up for a day or two.
KG
@dmsilev: Trump’s actually got a decent path to the nomination. He’s polling second behind Walker in Iowa, he’s second behind Bush in New Hampshire, he’s leading Nevada by double digits, and now leading in national polls. He’s first or second in three of the four early states (we don’t have recent numbers for South Carolina). And where we have numbers for the Super Tuesday states (which looks like March 1 – so right after the four early states finish), he’s leading (North Carolina) or within the margin of error (Virginia). If he makes it through Super Tuesday either first or second in delegates, he could definitely win the nomination. He’d likely lose at least 45 states in the general – probably more – but the nomination is achievable.
Josie
@Amir Khalid: This is exactly how he will fail. He thinks getting poll numbers is the same as winning primaries. It isn’t. There is organizational work involved in getting out the actual votes, and I doubt he even knows how to do this. It can’t be done with national news interviews and incendiary statements.
Shakezula
Seeing this story on the front page of the WaPo started my day off right.
Gosh, it’s almost as though encouraging members of one’s political party to be value spectacle over substance has a drawback or two. Teaching them to adore members of the 1% and view attacks on them as the worst sort of soshulsm might not have been the best idea, either.
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Mike in NC
@Kropadope: Somewhere I saw that Trump was getting 32%. Today he’s in South Carolina, so hopefully he’ll toss out some red meat about the War of Northern Aggression and maybe take a shot at strapping young bucks buying T-bone steaks with food stamps.
cmorenc
@shell:
If Trump persists in the 2016 campaign long enough to inflict unrecoverable damage to the prospects of the eventual GOP nominee’s chances to win the Presidency in 2016 – I will gladly put up with Trump in the morning, Trump in the evening, Trump at suppertime in the media circus. For one thing – notice how media focus on Trump sucks the oxygen out of the GOP’s campaign to focus media attention on smearing Hillary Clinton.
boatboy_srq
@RollSound: Suddenly all I can hear is Toy Dolls’ “Nellie the Elephant”…
Frankensteinbeck
@Josie:
While I agree, I’m having trouble figuring out who’s better. I guess Kasich or Walker? It ain’t Jeb. His brother was a slick campaigner, and more intellectually incurious rather than stupid. He also had a beautiful talent for saying dumb things that were really folksy, claiming to be moderate in the general, and appearing to be a Good Ol’ Country Boy. Jeb can’t do any of that. He just seems to be a weak, blithering dumbass. How he even got a governorship is baffling.
Gin & Tonic
@Frankensteinbeck: How he even got a governorship is baffling.
Florida elected Rick Scott twice.
aimai
@Boots Day: No one has mentioned the word megalomania but Trump has it, in spades. I agree with you. I think he certainly thinks he can win.
Roger Moore
@Belafon:
A six foot drop should be plenty for Trump, since he’s already provided plenty of rope.
Felonius Monk
A little OT,perhaps, but it looks like Roy Blunt (Rethug — Missouri) has some competition for his senate seat.
VOR
@catclub: Same Wisconsin budget cut $250M from the University of Wisconsin system. Of course the $250M cut was not linked to the $250M subsidy for the new arena.
MCA1
@KG: Add independent/third party president to the list, maybe?
The shenanigans of a brokered convention would theoretically be totally fascinating, although I suspect in reality it wouldn’t be nearly as cataclysmic as we all hope. There’s a pretty good chance 90% of Trump’s delegates, once released, would leave for whatever pastures of electability are available for grazing. If there were three or more candidates left, it could get interesting, but Trump loses immediately, I think.
Josie
@Frankensteinbeck: I agree with what you say about Jeb, but I suspect his money and organization will carry him through. It is possible that the base will overcome the money men this time, in which case it will be Walker (the most outspoken conservative). I honestly don’t know how it will develop. I wouldn’t put money either way at this point.
catclub
@VOR: Yes, of course not.
Frankensteinbeck
@Josie:
I don’t know. Wasn’t Perry pretty well organized? He just made a complete and total, pathetic fool of himself on-stage. Romney was just outrageously boring, and the not-Romneys all turned out to be clowns. Jeb IS a clown, and I’m not sure everyone else is even more of a clown this time. Just most of them.
Fair Economist
@KG:
That’s a decent path to a delegate lead, but not necessarily the nomination. Trump has high negatives among even Republicans, and they’ll go even higher as Republican voters realize how weak he’ll be in the general. He’ll face a powerful anybody-but-Trump movement, far more so than any other candidate. I’m a firm believer in “almost anything can happen in politics” and he does have a non-trivial shot, but it’s still a hard road for him to get nominated.
MCA1
@Gin & Tonic: Indeed. We have only to remember that the fabled “Florida Man…” of every exceedingly odd news headline comprises 50% of the voter rolls in the Sunshine State. And I’ve seen my share of “Florida Woman…” stories, too. Thankfully none of them were about Betty Cracker (that we know of).
Matt McIrvin
Trump still seems to be mostly making it harder for the minor Republican candidates. Though now Scott Walker actually seems to be gaining ground, so it’s not all of the red-meat guys who are suffering.
People always used to think of Marco Rubio as one of the major players, but he’s not going anywhere at the moment.
Belafon
@Roger Moore: Trump has a four foot pile of money below him. That’s the big reason the GOP can’t get rid of him.
Davis X. Machina
@Fair Economist: Rank the people who will make the Fox 10% cut in order of likelihood of committing a Perry-esque (2012) or even Stockdale-eque (1992) on-camera boner. Trump is tops, or nearly so.
He’ll take himself out — with a little ‘help’.
The right has found its Dean. “I represent the blowhard, hateful, bigoted wing — the Republican wing — of the Republican party.”
Kathleen
@pamelabrown53: When the Village Media People (Today Show) provide context as they did this morning (McCain at Hanoi Hilton while Trump had deferments to go to Ivy League College) with nary a mention of course of past GOP efforts to Swift Boat Kerry or Cleland or Duckworth, you have all you need to know about who runs the national media. Village Media People never provide context, unless it helps their handlers.
OT, but why are local TV channels broadcasting Kasich’s kick off speech at OSU (rhetorical question). Has “equal time” gone the way of “fairness doctrine”? Theme seems to be “we need united country”.
Davis X. Machina
@Kathleen:
Let’s see if he actually runs against a ‘shrink the turnout, and hope for 50%+1″ politics.
MattF
@Barry:
@Cervantes:
Since I’m being beaten up over this– The specific thing that (I suspect) most people don’t realize is that the criterion in any test for statistical significance is itself only an estimate. So, even if you think that you’re being careful by noting that error in a measurement is small enough to make a measurement significant, you could be wrong because the significance criterion itself has an error. And if the sample size is small, both the error and the error-in-the-error go to hell.
That said, I’m not a statistician, so any actual statistician is welcome to say I’m wrong.
Josie
@Frankensteinbeck: Perry got in late and was poorly prepared,both personally and organizationally. What really hurt him was his belief that Dreamers in Texas should pay in-state tuition. It’s ironic that one of his few good stands did him in with Republicans. This could also be the thing that stops Jeb (immigration). Being a fool does not seem to be a problem in the Republican primaries as long as you hate the right people. Walker has been in a number of elections and probably understands political organizing. He also has good money backing. I must admit that, although he doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the block, he makes me a bit nervous.
Davis X. Machina
@MattF: Yeah, but how many actual statisticians would we need to be sure that their declaration that you are wrong, is right?
Davis X. Machina
@Josie: Walker’s dimness is neither here nor there, at least to the people who own him.
How bright do you have to be to sign ALEC-generated legislation, or executive orders?
Republicans don’t announce campaigns, they make IPO’s….
JPL
NBC.com has three videos you can link to, Kasich announcement, the President speaking at the VFW and a Trump event in S.Carolina. Trump is not there yet though. The auditorium where the Trump even is going to be is full. The crowd looks restless though.
Amir Khalid
The Donald just keeps on making friends.
Goblue72
Trump ain’t winning the nomination – only a moron believes that. But he could clear out some of the marginal candidate underbrush. His only real job is to be a foil to Jeb Bush. He makes plutocrat Bush seem more moderate & less offensive in comparison. Bush needs these yahoos for awhile – standing alone, he looks like exactly what he truly is – a monster.
(Walker ain’t wining neither – that slimy haired pencil-neck is going to melt under the lights of primetime.)
GOP has Bush and nobody else viable. Unfortunately, we seem to have only Clinton.
Cacti
IGMFY is a lot more sophisticated than anything Trump is peddling.
His is a more primal roar of: Die liberal filth!
FormerSwingVoter
I’m not sure why people keep treating Trump as if he’s unelectable. He’s an insane, stupid, xenophobic lunatic hell-bent on utilizing impossible solutions that won’t work simply because they’re as confrontational and would cause as much human suffering as possible.
In the actual United States, rather than the version we wished we lived in, that should get him at least 40% of the popular vote.
samiam
Are you people really that dumb?
Psst…Trump doesn’t want to win. He has no intention of it ever going farther than the primary…if that.
This is purely a way for him to promote himself and feed his ego.
If anything, the McCain thing is intentional to torpedo himself and get an easy way out.
Seanly
The 27% is from John Roger’s Kungfu Monkey blog from 2005. I hope the link works properly – I can’t go to Kungfu Monkey from work for some reason…
Anywho, my understanding of the crazifaction factor is that it works for subsets. So, 27% (give or take) of the population is crazy. A further 27% (again +/- a little) of that original 27% is even crazier.
Example: A poll of all political identities finds 27% hold a mainstream conservative opinion. However, within the subset of conservatives (which is 35 to 40% of the population), 27% of them holds the next level of wrong and/or crazy thought from the original position.
NotMax
Presidential politics has truly traveled through the looking glass.
Bobby Thomson
@RollSound: spelled backwards because if you say his name three times the hair in your drain backs up and yells racist slurs.
Kathleen
@Davis X. Machina: What has been interesting to me for awhile is how he campaigned as the “kinder, gentler” Republican during the gubernatorial primary in 2014. It’s almost like he has access to some magical, mystical secret polling somewhere. While he probably does not stand a chance this time, maybe he’s playing a longer game and trusts that he can emerge as a viable, “reasonable” candidate should that ever be the new GOP “brand”. I’ve heard some rumblings that CEO’s and some GOP in Ohio want the slash and burn strategy to stop.
Yatsuno
@Fair Economist: That movement needed to get started already. The problem is the RNC has no leverage on Trump, so most of their tools, such as fundraising, they can’t use against him. The Donald is gonna ride this train as far as he can and until he actually runs into a stumbling block that even his base can’t forgive him for he’ll keep chugging along.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: So, he realizes that ‘feckless blowhard’ is not a compliment. I guess.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
I think a better description would be to say that it’s a rule of thumb. People will often use a cutoff of p=0.05 as the line for statistical significance, but that’s just a convention; in most cases, it would be much more helpful to report an actual p-value [ETA: and a description of the statistical test used] rather than just report whether a result is or is not significant. There are also a number of common mistakes that can inflate the significance of a result, such as wrongly assuming data is distributed normally or failing to correct for testing multiple hypotheses simultaneously.
Van Buren
@Goblue72: Lest anyone feel despair over the looming contest between Clinton and Bush, keep in mind the Lancasters fought the Yorks for just over 30 years. We’re almost there; maybe we can find new blood soon.
Schlemazel
@sparrow:
I used to believe that there was no way a coke-junkie, intellectually challenged, wastrel son of a political hack with grandpa’s money could ever be elected President of the US. But it happened & even the shit show that followed has not slowed the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. Just because Trump is the sludge beneath the bottom does not indicate they will not continue to dig, sadly.
Cacti
@FormerSwingVoter:
I’m not dismissive at all of Trump’s possibility at winning the R nomination. He seems to be a latter day Barry Goldwater, with the ability to hit all of the right notes with the wingnut base.
His problem is the overall demographics of the electorate in the general election.
Mitt Romney got the highest share of the white vote of any candidate in 24 years, and got thumped in the general. The Donald has a 13% favorable rating with Hispanic voters after a mere month of campaigning, which puts him at less than half of what Mitt got in 2012.
So, just to keep pace with Mitt’s losing effort 4-years ago, he would need to better Mitt’s 60% share of the white vote by 2-3 points.
mdblanche
@Seanly: It’s 27%’s all the way down.
Schlemazel
@shell:
Why? There really is nothing important happening as the silly season is still in the future & it makes many of us happy to see the work Tronald Dump is doing for the GOP. I say we toss another bundle of stick on the fire and see if that hair goo is flammable.
Schlemazel
@Belafon:
6 feet is plenty given the noose he has put his head in.
mai naem mobile
They built it. Only they can break it. Thats what the Republicans were telling me in 2012 anyway.
catclub
@Schlemazel: You optimists! always looking at the bright side of things.
gvg
Trump probably can’t win the nomination even if primary voters might prefer him because he doesn’t have the organization. Remember the last time, some of the Repub. candidates didn’t even know how to get themselves on all the ballots? That is the kind of thing Trump will have problems with. Hillary lost to Obama because her people didn’t understand each individual states rules on time (I bet they do this time)
What I have been wondering is how the R’s choose a nominee legally. In most of the past contests I have heard Democrats need a certain number of delegates. As I understand it the Republicans don’t have to have the same rules. Each party chooses its own rules. Since I have never cared for Republican’s I don’t happen to know how they do it. I do know they changed the rules in some states to award proportionately instead of winner take all. Past contests did not involve 20 choices. If there is some number they have to reach and its very divided, does the one with the most get it or can it work out so none have enough? Do they get to make deals and combine delegates? That could mean someone gets to be the nominee that wasn’t even in the top 3 or something. What would potential voters think if this happened? It might cause more party defections than normal.
Anybody know?
Judge Crater
The fact that el Rushbo is behind Trump is significant. Rush’s main theme, which he has been preaching forever, is that there is a whole cohort (we know who they are) which is getting something for nothing. Benefits and goodies that they haven’t earned and don’t deserve. And the engine of this evil largess is “big government” and the “bureaucracy”. The government is contravening the omniscient, infallible workings of the market place. The anger over immigration has its roots in this basic tenet of Limbaughism.
Trump has hit this nerve big time. He’s not just worried about rapists and killers – he’s also voicing the fear that all these crummy Mexicans are getting food stamps and driver’s licenses and free tuition to state colleges. Stuff they haven’t earned. Something for nothing. This notion enrages the white working class and its angry apostles.
Trump, a man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a man who never served in the military, a man with too many ex-wives and a man who knows nothing about government or public administration, is thus, to the 27 percent, the perfect chief executive. He’ll put a stop to it. He’ll do it globally too. He’ll cut China and its cheating, phony capitalism down to size. No more filching off the great U.S.A. No more something for nothing.
JPL
I’m listening to Trump speak in SC. Obama is just not smart and Lindsay is an idiot. Now he’s on to his personal wealth. I missed the beginning so I’m not sure if he addressed the hero status of his good friend McCain.
I shut him off because life is to short.
Schlemazel
@Frankensteinbeck:
It took him a couple of tries. I was there for the first one, he chose a running mate on the record with anti-Jewish and anti-hispanic remarks and ran into a buzz saw of a good ol boy (Lawton Chiles) who left him stammering & dazed in their debate.
My Republican friends assured me !JEB! was the stupid brother, Neil was the sart one but got caught & the other one was a wastrel bozer & junkie.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina:
Strikes me as an odd comparison, to put it mildly.
Cervantes
@Kathleen:
Plus I bet they forgot to explain that McCain would never have seen the inside of the Naval Academy if not for his ancestry.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goblue72:
The problem is, Bush is not viable. Have you listened to the man? It’s not about charisma, even. He’s a blundering nitwit, with none of his brother’s folksy charm or campaigning skills. He has all of Romney’s failings, but adds one that’s far more serious – Jeb stumbles, constantly. He sounds weak and indecisive. That gets you destroyed in a Republican primary.
@Schlemazel:
It looks like they were right. It’s sad that W. turned out to have one very specific talent – political campaigning.
Schlemazel
@catclub:
Yeah, it has been noted here before that I tend to the negative. Life has taught me to always prepare for the worst while working for the best. Even at that my fellow countrymen can still disappoint me to an extreme
Davis X. Machina
@Cervantes: Why? He’s their Dean, absent perhaps the health-care proposal.
Trump’s corralled a non-trivial slice of his party by running an outside-in campaign.
The official party can’t stand him, even though he draws crowds, and energizes the base.
No one — at least no one who doesn’t follow politics — seems to know what his particular image stance is, except on immigration, but everybody else is a RiNO.
I worked for Dean’s campaign, albeit at a very low level, and it was 90% “hell, yeah” and 10% policy positions, at least for the spear-carriers.
rikyrah
@Goblue72: \
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
boatboy_srq
Interestingly, it does appear that long-term The Donald may not suffer nearly as much for his McCain-bashing as for his having not Communed with his Creator and Cowered in Fear as all good Xtians do. Benen brought this up this morning.
Mandalay
@pamelabrown53:
I’m also surprised that the Villagers are ignoring that letter right now, but I think it may come back to haunt Jeb! in a very bad way.
His handlers couldn’t even come up with an explanation that made any sense:
msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jeb-bushs-swift-boat-defense-comes-short
Claiming that a letter supporting attacks on Kerry was nothing more than a “thank you” will be thrown back in Bush’s face by the Clinton camp if he gets the nomination. He will be painted as a slimeball who selectively supports smearing war heroes, and will be asked to apologize for what he wrote. Then he’s in trouble whether he apologizes or not.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Maybe if he had a rope around his neck…
Schlemazel
@Frankensteinbeck:
He did play the good ol boy, nice guy thing well be lets be honest, none of the campaign was his doing. Grandpa’s money bought the best there could be had. He, like St. Ronald, was simply the sock puppet they used to mouth the words. I expect Walker to be the same, not very bright, not very involved but a willing tool of the Koch foundation. !JEB! would be better on a couple of issues but just speed the trainwreck the GOP set in motion over the last 40 years. Clinton & Obama have slowed the decent but neither has stopped it (Superman could not stop it in 8 years most with a GOP controlled House). We need at least 16-20 years with all the levers under control or the devastation of the Republican Party.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: Batshit mcChimpy had a real talent for saying stupid shit & whopping lies with a straight face.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Great minds, Roger…
Grace
No less than Erick son of Erick has some strong words about Kasich: “But I will not pee on the GOP, let alone vote for President in 2016 if God and the Republicans decide to punish us with John Kasich as the Presidential nominee or Vice Presidential nominee.”
Wonder why such vitriol for Kasich, to the point his view would violate RedState’s posting rules? He claims it’s Kasich’s support for Obamacare but that reaction seems way out of proportion for someone who supported Romney in 2012 despite his being the first to implement ‘Obamacare’ on the state level.
Frankensteinbeck
@Schlemazel:
I agree that the organization was set up for Bush the Lesser, but that’s only part of a campaign. The comparison with Reagan is apt. Georgy could perform for a camera. He loved meeting people and shaking hands. In all the inside stories, praise him or hate him, that’s consistent. He was good with people, confident, and good on stage. He looked like a fool to us, but he was exactly the kind of fool the GOP loves – smooth and self-assured. Jeb… isn’t. He’s a whiny brat who trips over his own feet. He’s going to pull Perry’s ‘Uh…’ over and over. He only has a shot if every one of his opponents is godawful bad. He’s in the running solely because he does have an organization, and if some of his opponents do too, he’s in trouble.
EDIT – @Paul in KY:
And that talent is incredibly important to Republicans. Jeb doesn’t have it.
scav
@boatboy_srq: I was wondering about that.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina:
Dean was a legislator for four years, then lieutenant governor for another four years, then governor for twelve years.
That experience alone would appear to diminish considerably the usefulness of a comparison to Trump.
rikyrah
@gvg:
Considering that Santorum actually won the Iowa Caucus and they gave it t Willard….legal doesn’t really go in the GOP>
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I think you’re missing the difference between the Swiftboating of Kerry and Trump’s attacks on McCain. With Kerry, there were people who were attacking the facts of his accomplishments. If you accept what they said as truth, then Kerry wasn’t actually a war hero, so it was perfectly legitimate to slam him for lying about his record. In contrast, Trump agrees with the basic facts of McCain’s war record. Instead, he’s disputing the interpretation, claiming that they don’t support the case of McCain as a war hero. There’s enough wiggle room between those two that Bush can claim to be consistent in his behavior.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Anybody watch all of Kasich’s speech? I had him on in the car for about three minutes, he was talking about the sun coming up again in Wilmington, OH (so I guess Obama brought morning back to America). I caught two references to “preachers”, “god fearing”, “children of god”, “under god”. That’s when I bailed. I thought his delivery sounded weak, but then I’m predisposed to dislike him.
Anybody impressed/scared by the love child of Dennis Kucinich and Paul Ryan? (And lest any of our resident pedants feel the need to chime in: Yes, I know Kasich has been around longer than Ryan, including the whole just-a-green-eye-shade-numbers-guy schtick. Thanks.)
pamelabrown53
@Mandalay:
Re: Jeb!’s letter to swiftboater. Since the MSM/Villagers aren’t hopping on this (which frankly surprises me), hopefully, Hillary is filing this away to reintroduce when it can do the most damage.
If Bernie is the nominee, do you think he’d use it to attack Jeb!?
Bobby Thomson
@boatboy_srq: Reagan never went to church and didn’t talk much about religion.
Mandalay
@Frankensteinbeck:
He does, and his body language is also a bit strange. He strikes the oddest poses sometimes, tilting his head, contorting his shoulders, and leaning.
He also seems almost too relaxed, like he doesn’t really give a shit either way about anything.
In a way it’s a breath of fresh air compared to manly blowhards like Trump and Christie, but I don’t think voters will like it.
Cervantes
@Bobby Thomson:
But he did have Falwell and others vouching for him.
Davis X. Machina
@Cervantes: Dean didn’t run on his experience… and his campaign didn’t stress it. Given Kerry’s comparable run in public life, it wasn’t going to make a difference, or help.
The war, health care, and civil unions. That, and ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic party’.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina:
Let’s just say I thought you were comparing the two men, Dean and Trump.
Bobby Thomson
@pamelabrown53: he won’t be and wouldn’t.
Bobby Thomson
@Cervantes: Trump can easily afford a similar endorsement.
boatboy_srq
Has anyone been following the VSP freakout over The Donald? “Not a serious candidate”; “unfit to be pResident”; “destroying the process of selecting the President” (that one’s my favorite). The Des Moines Register apparently ripped him a new one for not being the Very Serious Person they demand a potential pResident be. Very entertaining.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not me. The Village put Jeb! in the “Old Fashioned Northeastern Moderate” box a long time ago, in spite of Terri Schiavo, the Scarlet Letter bill, Paul Wolfowitz, calling his idiot brother a “great president” and god know what else is going to come up in the next few months is going to shake that narrative (hey’re stilling calling Marco Rubio “smart“). Short of calling for the establishment of a state religion, I can’t think of anything that will. Larry Sabato has an article in Politico, which I haven’t read because it’s Larry Sabato and Politico, but I might get to it later, but he’s arguing that Bush is not the nice guy he seems to be. Seems to be, I guess, to people unfamiliar with the Bush tradition of fighting sleazy.
and they don’t like John Kerry. They hate Al Gore, but they don’t like John Kerry. I’d say Hillary falls somewhere in between hate and dislike for them.
boatboy_srq
@Bobby Thomson: That was thirty years ago. Falwell, Perkins, Robertson, Huckabee, DeMint and the rest put paid to that approach.
gvg
I live in Florida. Jeb seems less competent than he used to be. I’ve no idea why. I never thought well of him so I avoided watching him when he was gov. but I am sure I would have heard more if he was this lame then. I wonder what he has been doing while not in office. It would be interesting to find out. He definitely understood what was happening in this state better than he seems to understand the nation.
I was surprised he decided to run as I really thought people did not want to hear from a Bush. the only reason I thought he would get the nom. is that the others are all so pathetic. Now I really can’t say.
Mandalay
@dmsilev:
Probably not, but Trump can guarantee the presidency to Hillary Clinton if he runs as an independent.
I don’t know what the RNC could possibly offer Trump to prevent that happening if he is so inclined.
Hungry Joe
Does Trump have any kind of organization/ground game, or does he figure (to the extent that he figures anything) that he can sail over his opponents powered by hot air alone? Polls are one thing, delegates another, and inside elbowing/maneuvering yet another.
As for Frankensteinbeck’s “[Jeb] only has a shot if every one of his opponents is godawful bad”: Well, there you have it.
hoodie
I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump is undeterred by this because there may be ego involved in the show and Trump is carrying out an experiment in a new form of campaigning. While most of his act is bluster and it’s easy to conclude that this whole thing is just reality show theater, he may be partially serious. It’s very likely that he looks at his outrageousness as the secret to his success. He thinks he’s smarter than all the timid politicians and has a boulder on his shoulder because of that. The look on his face when Obama ragged on him during the WH Correspondents Dinner a few years ago made me think he was cut to the bone and has developed a real animus towards all politicians. At base, Trump takes himself quite seriously. He just defines success differently than conventional candidates.
He probably thinks McCain is an incompetent bumbler and dissembler (not an unreasonable conclusion), so what if he went a bit over the line in questioning his hero credentials? That was fine when McCain’s party was swiftboating Kerry, so why the big deal? McCain was kind of a fuck up, not that it diminishes what he went through in Viet Nam. If anything, the reaction from the other Republicans may reinforce Trump’s convictions, as they only take umbrage when it comes to one of their own and didn’t give a shit when he was trashing other people. Trump knows that with so many pygmies running for the GOP nomination, he can at least garner a lot of attention by staying in, even if his poll numbers drop and he doesn’t win a bunch of delegates. No one will have a big lead, at least for the first several months.
boatboy_srq
@gvg: Twenty years drinking the water, eating the oranges and the Gulf Shrimp (hey! is this an effect of Deepwater Horizon and high-octane shellfish?), and living through 1+ terms of Governor Voldemort. But yes he appears much diminished from his days in Tallahassee.
catclub
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Nope. I just read the Kasich = Huntsman16 post at Political Animal. Huntsman got a lot of nice press because his daddy is a Billionaire and Huntsman is worth about $400M, but lost because only the media liked him. He got about 1 delegate.
Kasich has the same problem – only the media like him, and he does not have that $1B behind him for credibility.
The other thing is: he says moderate things, which the GOP primary voters don’t actually favor. Why he is not selling his actual extremism is kind of a mystery if he wants to win.
Somebody else wrote that he will be there just in case the GOP turns sane. I think he is far too old for that. That is a long game.
Anoniminous
@KG:
GOP primaries held between March 1 and March 14 will have their ‘up for grabs’ delegates – roughly half of the total delegates for those states – assigned by proportional share of the vote. Trump could win 100% of the vote — he won’t — in the early states and still trail/be tied with the Establishment/Corporate Wing’s candidate in total delegate count.
The GOP candidate will be whoever the Establishment/Corporate Wing decides because their ‘side’ already has 1/2 of the delegates. Granted they do not necessarily control 1/2 of the delegates but with the delegates they do control plus enough of the ‘up for grabs’ delegates won in the states should push their candidate to the nomination.
Boots Day
@boatboy_srq: I’m sure Trump is thrilled by those reactions. Getting attacked by the MSM is a badge of achievement to a sizable chunk of the Republican electorate.
Boots Day
@Hungry Joe: Trump’s campaign manager is a guy named Corey Lewandowski, whose sole electoral experience appears to be running a losing campaign for an incumbent Republican senator in 2002. That’s not much, but it’s better than I expected Trump to have.
boatboy_srq
@scav: Ayuh. A small but meaningful portion of the GOTea base is quite comfortable with candidates’ being mean ornery arrogant b#st#rds, so long as they claim to love Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus, memorize the
Wealth of NationsBuyBull and visit one of HisMallsTemples every Sunday, every other Wednesday and the odd Saturday night.catclub
@Hungry Joe:
I think the answer to this is: “More than you would have thought.”
He has hired some political operators. I was surprised, too.
catclub
@Anoniminous:
[Citation needed]
So there are GOP superdelegates?
boatboy_srq
@Boots Day: The entertainment value of the VSP freakout over The Donald is excellent. The Year of The Donald is going to be much better than GoT, and possibly even bloodthirstier.
Kathleen
@Cervantes: I believe they did forget.
lol
@Davis X. Machina:
One of the interesting thing is that a lot of liberals assumed that if you were against the war, the rest of your policy positions would be incredibly left-wing. So we ended up with Dean, who had a moderate-ish record compared to Dems in his state, being raised as a flaming left-wing liberal by many of his supporters.
You’d see the odd diary at DailyKos from people who would discover that he was a filthy moderate but it largely went down the memory hole.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lol: I was always a bit of a Dean-skeptic, but I’m gobsmacked at how many people still ascribe such unique and undeniable political talents to him– to say nothing of the progressive purity of the current MEK lobbyist and (I think?) one time member of the Concord Coalition of budget scolds. They think he single-handedly created the ’06 wave, and like so many other pols frozen in amber of “almost”, never had to deal with the prose of actually governing.
[email protected]
@shell:
The energy expended here alternatively mocking and half-fearing Trump is eerily similar to what this blog spent obsessing over Ms. Palin. Good times, good times….
Bitter Scribe
Meh. Remember when Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann were front-runners in 2012?
boatboy_srq
@Bitter Scribe: Cain and Bachmann each had unexploded ordnance in their baggage (as did Perry and Gingrich) . Trump’s bombs have largely gone off already.
Matt McIrvin
@lol: There was a similar phenomenon with Elizabeth Warren, in reverse: because she had a lefty reputation, a lot of people assumed that her foreign-policy positions would be way to the left of, say, Obama’s or Hillary Clinton’s, when in fact they’re quite mainstream-Democratic. Every so often you see someone getting disappointed about this.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@samiam:
Aaaaahahahaha
different-church-lady
If they actually somehow let him seize the nomination, it’s very likely we’re looking at the second ever electoral college sweep.
LAC
@Cacti: thank you. Jesus Christ Donald stunt winning? What, another round of “guess the angry white person?” It is always gimmicky shit with republicans.
And what brand is he going to promote after this run of the ego express? Someone tell me. He is burning bridges left and right. What is he gonna do? Have a show right after Lou dobbs?