Republican Nomination Thread

With the type of campaign Cruz is running and his momentum I see him capturing the national lead before Iowa. I believe people are realizing that he is just as anti-establishment as Trump except he acts more presidential and states his ideas in a better way than Trump does. I see Rubio as the establishment choice and their last ditch attempt to keep someone anti-establishment out of the White House. I honestly do not see Trump as a serious threat to win the White House like everybody else does, he has his supporters already. At this point you love him or hate him.

 

Just announced that he is deploying his Miami based to the early states with an main focus on New Hampshire.

Stopped campaign TV ads in Iowa and SC (but his Super Pac is still gonna be spending that remaining of that $100 million he raised earlier in the year)...

 

IF it is these two, I hope for Cruz.

Rubio is a complete useless piece of shit - never shows up for work while cashing that taxpayer paycheck. I can't name a single thing he has done for Florida or even advocated to help make our state remotely better.

At least Ted Cruz gives a damn about Texas and its voters who put him into office.

Oh screw the establishment GOP. Had enough of that crap to last me a lifetime with that last Bush President. If a GOPer is going to be President, it better be an outsider. One more reason for preference of Cruz over the useless Senator.

 

Couldn't have said this any better. Honestly, term limits need to be set in place to prevent this career politician bullshit where they just lie to the people to get elected then they don't do what they said they would in congress.

Hopefully a guy like Cruz or Rand could win the nomination.

 

Geez, I don't get the love for Cruz. Everyone who knows him hates his guts.

Plus his tax plan is basically a VAT tax in disguise. WTF?

What are his accomplishments?

 

Ben Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts have resigned.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/31/politics/ben-carson-campaign-manager-quits/index.html

 

So, how has Cruz achieved some exemption from that standard? He is a Senator. How has he helped the people who are supporting him?

That's a rhetorical question. The answer is he hasn't. And his tax plan, in the unlikely event it ever gets enacted, will fuck them up the ass.

 

I'm guessing the ticket is going to be Jeb Bush up top and Ted Cruz as the veep candidate. I just see too much movement out of the establishment trying to keep Bush viable for me not to believe that he'll come out of the brokered convention on top after the Donald Dragon has been slain somehow. They'll put Cruz on the bottom of the ticket to keep the Tea Party from crucifying the establishment after that move.

 

A brokered convention is pretty unlikely

 

It does not appear as if any of the candidates is likely to get enough delegates to be the clear nominee going into the convention. It's possible the field will get winnowed down to just 2 candidates going in but very unlikely that happens.

I expect Bush, Cruz, Rubio and Trump at a minimum to have some delegates committed going into the convention. I think Christie may well pick up some delegates in the northeast. Fiorina might well keep her options open going in also. She's certainly going to be on the veep shortlist and you never know what happens if the convention opens with one guy at 39% of the delegates and another at 30%, which is a pretty realistic scenario.

It's an angry electorate, particularly on the Republican side, and the guys they're channeling through right now are probably un-electable in the general election. Trump certainly is and Cruz and Christie are on the razor edge of electability.

This is like the '72 election reversed in a lot of ways. All of the Republican candidates are flawed in one way or another and the party hates the person they're going to be running against, just like the Democrats hated Nixon. Jeb Bush is the least flawed candidate because his flaws are all based on the angry Republican electorate and the memories of his brother's and for some middle-aged conservatives his father's Presidencies.

He won't be a popular compromise at the convention but who else are they going to pick? Paul Ryan?

 

Jeb Bush is arguably the most flawed. Look at the sewer that is Florida because of him. He can't get out of the race soon enough.

Rubio will likely win the nomination as he is the only candidate the Dems have reason to fear. He's young and he continues to use the "American dream" rhetoric. His flaws however include the inability to handle his own finances and his desire to bolster the military, which already accounts for 60% of every dollar. Where is the money going to come from? Rand called him out on it in one of the debates.

 

I don't believe that the powers that be will let Donald Trump be the face of the Republican Party in 2016. There's too much risk involved in letting that happen. They're going to find a way to avoid putting him on the ticket.

That's why I think a brokered convention is the most likely outcome. I think Trump is likely to go into the convention just shy of 40% of the delegates and somebody else will have about 30% and the convention will be about how to avoid nominating Trump without creating a third party run by him.

It's almost as scary to think of Secretary of the Treasury Trump or Secretary of State Trump but I'll bet that's where we're headed if the GOP wins.

 

On the extremely small chance that a brokered convention happened and Jeb came out as the nominee I'd give up all the faith I have left in humanity.