The Republicans' Ugly Revolt (or how Cruz will get the nom)

[WanderingWinoZ]

I just keep telling myself we are more than 365 days out from the general election & there's no way some/most/all of these major ass-clowns won't go down before then.

But, this is scarier than Pixy's sig...

[ESF]

We all know my feelings on this.

At this point, I believe it will all come down to the budget showdown set December. He will either crash and burn, or go into Iowa a rock star. I predict the latter.

[heyjude]

My money is on Rubio.

[heyjude]

Oct 12, 2015 10:25:39 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

Oct 12, 2015 10:23:37 GMT -5 heyjude said:

My money is on Rubio.

This is preferable to Cruz.  Although more worrisome because I think he'd probably stand a better chance against HRC.

Basically, I'm worried that Hillary is losing steam and that Bernie can't win a general.

Totally worried about Bernie vs Rubio!!!

[ESF]

Oct 12, 2015 10:25:39 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

Oct 12, 2015 10:23:37 GMT -5 heyjude said:

My money is on Rubio.

This is preferable to Cruz.  Although more worrisome because I think he'd probably stand a better chance against HRC.

Basically, I'm worried that Hillary is losing steam and that Bernie can't win a general.

Read the politico piece I posted on Saturday. It's reassuring me that regardless of who the dems pick, they have a built in advantage of a far superior, more sophisticated GOTV machine.

But I definitely think Rubio is the hardest GOP candidate to beat. Sanders would definitely lose to him.

[miniroller]

Oct 12, 2015 10:27:33 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Oct 12, 2015 10:25:39 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

This is preferable to Cruz. Although more worrisome because I think he'd probably stand a better chance against HRC.

Basically, I'm worried that Hillary is losing steam and that Bernie can't win a general.

Totally worried about Bernie vs Rubio!!!

Also my biggest fear!

[Velar Fricative]

WTF has happened in this country that we may get the guy who fucking shut down the government two years ago because he was acting like a petulant child? This is how we reward him, with a POTUS nomination? I still don't think he will win but the idea of it just pisses me off.

[ESF]

I can't find the thread right now, but it was about a month ago, and if you looked at the poll results at that time, and summed up the total voters for anti-establishment candidates (Trump, Carson, Fiorina, and Cruz), the results were well over 50% of the voters sampled. The rest of the candidates had mostly single digit support. The polls are shifting between candidates, but staying somewhat steady in terms of how they split between establishment and anti-establishment.

Now I think Fiorina is a bit more establishment than not, so I don't see her voters going to Cruz, but Carson and Trump's supporters -absolutely. If you like those two jokers, you sure as shit aren't going to decide that the comparatively sane Marco Rubio is your man, but an impassioned debate performance by Cruz could flip you overnight.

Also -- Rubio has gone up a tiny bit, but I thought this was interesting --

www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/10/09/marco_rubio_is_not_actually_surging_in_the_gop_campaign.html

I'm not writing Rubio off yet, but Cruz is a real dark horse here.

[derp]

I'm no expert, but my gut says Rubio ends up with the nomination.

As far as the dems, my sense is that Sanders has a lot of momentum right now, much like Obama did in 2008. I'm especially seeing it among my white friends and acquaintances. But I think what he's missing is the minority vote, and for that reason, I don't think he'll ultimately prevail. My money's on Clinton/Rubio.

[ESF]

I was curious about the National Review reference in here, so I went and found the article.

If the OP doesn't convince you of Ted Cruz's chances, this article will.



www.nationalreview.com/article/425183/ted-cruz-iowa



It's long, but the big takeaway from it is the following discussion:


By all accounts, Cruz is positioned to succeed in Iowa, which has been friendly to conservative candidates in years past. The Real Clear Politics polling average has him tied for third place with Carly Fiorina, and he has a solid ground game in place. “Our trajectory has been slow and steady upward,” says Bryan English, Cruz’s political director in the state. “I’ve just been kind of curious, okay, when are people going to start paying attention to what we’re doing and that we’re positioned to do very well in Iowa.”  Steve Deace, an Iowa-based talk-radio host who has endorsed Cruz, says that as far back as August of 2013, Cruz was asking him to set up meetings with top Iowa activists. Now, Deace says, the Texas senator has “the best [Iowa] organization I’ve ever seen,” composed of the sort of dedicated activists who put Rick Santorum over the finish line four years ago.

Cruz also has a plan beyond Iowa. He has referred to the March 1 “SEC primary,” in which eight Southern states go to the polls, as his “firewall”: that is, a backstop against whatever losses he might sustain beforehand. This year, these Southern states will go to the polls before Florida and before the traditional Super Tuesday, a change in the primary calendar instituted by RNC chairman Reince Priebus. Most of those contests, unlike the ones that precede them, are not winner-take-all, and Cruz’s goal is to win the most delegates rather than to take entire states.

Throughout the primary season, Cruz has crisscrossed the South, sweet-talking voters unaccustomed to playing an outsized role in presidential contests. “He has made the largest investment in those Southern states of any candidate,” Mackowiak says. “Most of those political leaders in those states have never been asked to participate in the process.”

Texas is one of the “SEC primary” states, and it alone will award 155 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination. Cruz, of course, holds a natural advantage. His team spent over a year developing detailed knowledge of the state’s political contours just three years ago. Mackowiak says there’s a “very real possibility” that Cruz will be the overall delegate leader on March 2. Mackowiak says there’s a ‘very real possibility’ that Cruz will be the overall delegate leader on March 2.

It’s not uncommon for “insurgent” candidates to take a number of early states, but they then typically have to rapidly raise the cash and build the big infrastructure needed to turn out voters across the country. Rick Santorum’s campaign was starved for money until he won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, after which it had trouble turning a sudden influx of cash into a viable campaign organization overnight. In 2008, in the months before the Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee had no national finance chairman or speechwriters, and he didn’t have enough money to commission any internal polls. Cruz is a different sort of insurgent, who has from the first days of the 2016 primary made it clear that he won’t be outpaced financially. Small-dollar donors from an enormous e-mail list culled during the fight over the 2013 government shutdown have made him the leader in hard-dollar donations, and a cadre of eccentric billionaires looking to shake up Republican presidential politics have put over $37 million into his super PACs. He has used that money to build a national organization: As he told a gathering of donors in August assembled at the behest of Charles and David Koch, “If you are going to run a national campaign, you’ve got to be able to compete nationally.”

[KateAggie]

Still not worried. But y'all KOKO.

My $$$ is on Rubio.

[Cicero]

Oct 12, 2015 15:26:46 GMT -5 KateAggie said:

Still not worried. But y'all KOKO.

My $$$ is on Rubio.

Same here. But I also don't think Trump is going anywhere before the very bitter end so I kind of doubt that the vacum predicted for Cruz to fill is going to happen in the first place.

[Cicero]

Oct 12, 2015 22:02:29 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

Oct 12, 2015 15:39:19 GMT -5 Cicero said:

Same here. But I also don't think Trump is going anywhere before the very bitter end so I kind of doubt that the vacum predicted for Cruz to fill is going to happen in the first place.

But Trump isn't the only person he needs to pull from. Trump is starting a downhill slide, so if he can pick that up plus the Carson and Fiorina votes, it could be big enough. Then the establishment will back him and get him past a slumping Trump.

The establishment hates Cruz--more so than Trump. It will never back him.

[bowies]

If this ends up a brokered convention (and at this point it's looking that way) Cruz is out.

I think Bush bounces back down the road when more middling candidates finally drop out. An increased spotlight on Rubio will not fare him well. He reminds me so much of GWB, more than Jeb ever did or ever will. But in this wacky year, maybe he is the compromise candidate out of a brokered convention, the sacrificial lamb. It still blows my mind that a guy unfit for the job of Florida House Speaker is in this position.

I don't know who it could be other than one of the Florida guys though. I honestly thought Rand Paul would be more of a factor.

[josieposy]

Gun bacon for everyone!

[WanderingWinoZ]

I'll just drop this here for those of you that are Rubio fans...or at least are betting on him heyjude

Sheldon Adelson warms to Marco Rubio
An endorsement could come as early as the end of this month, sources close to the casino magnate say.


Read more: www.politico.com/story/2015/10/marco-rubio-sheldon-adelson-donors-2016-214680#ixzz3oSVrACFQ

[ESF]

I don't see the establishment backing Cruz ever. I think they'd more likely back Trump. Hell, I see them supporting Hillary before Ted Cruz. He scares any semi-literate person with a grasp on reality. As that blogger I followed said, there's nothing further to the right of Ted Cruz but armed sedition.

But Cruz doesn't need the establishment. He's swimming in cash. He's also got a lot of small donors, the kinds that are easy to go back to for another $50. He is the most organized and disciplined. He is in this for the long haul.

[josieposy]

Trump is going to be on SNL next month. If he's leaving, it's not anytime soon.