To do a write up of the Republican Primary justice I think you need to spend more time writing up your analysis than I, someone doing it for free in my spare time, can provide time to do. But here I am trying.
Right now the Republican Primary consists of Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich and Carson. Carson and Cruz seem to be trying to split the religious conservative vote. Trump has the non-religious, anti-establishment, and conservative vote. Rubio and Kasich are vying for the establishment conservative vote. You'll notice a theme there. Conservative. There are no moderates in this race. Anyone calling Kasich a moderate conservative or a moderate Republican is an idiot and only trying to put him on a right axis line graph with no left. They really are all bunched up on the extreme right end of the scale. So level of conservatism isn't a huge factor here.
The other thing happening in the Republican Party is the full scale adoption of authoritarianism. (Yes, you can be anti-establishment and authoritarian.) Politico has an article by Matthew MacWilliams about a poll conducted testing authoritarian belief in Republican primary voters. MacWilliams writes, "49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale." The study finds that Trump has locked up about half the authoritarian votes in the primary. He doesn't write about where the remainder of the Republican authoritarians are leaning, but I'm willing to bet that a number are locked into Cruz and Carson. Cruz and Carson are vying for the evangelical vote and evangelicals generally score high on authoritarian scales. Authoritarians believe generally in strong father figures that must be obeyed and quite frankly the evangelical view of God is the ultimate father figure that must be obeyed.
The question in my mind is what happens when Cruz and Carson drop? Where do their supporters break? Do they go establishment or do they go authoritarian? I think that's what will define the end of the primary. Mind you that Trump is in the driver's seat in this campaign. Rubio has proven that by adopting the campaign tactic of making personal attacks against Trump. I have no clue what Rubio is trying to do. Attacking Trump personally just solidifies him with his base. It isn't going to peel off Trump voters. Trump's appeal isn't his crassness. His supporters enjoy it because they find it refreshing and it's something they fantasize about being able to do. Trump is a billionaire which means he has freedom to do whatever he wants. Trump doesn't need money and he doesn't need a job. If his followers spoke the way he does they would get fired. Fear of being jobless and moneyless is a key factor in curbing certain speech. Maybe Rubio thinks it makes him look like Trump, but at the end of the day you can have the Real Trump or you can have the cheap knock off version. Rubio is the cheap knock off version.
The authoritarian bent isn't the only factor in the nomination for the Republicans, but it is a big one. And I do think it's going to be a large driver to who wins. Another factor comes down to the establishment versus the anti-establishment. The Tea Party is extremely anti-establishment. They have tried to oust the establishment in Congress and have had considerable success in doing so. Trump is the ultimate anti-establishment candidate in the Republican Party right now. Upon a time Rubio was a Tea Party darling and represented the anti-establishment, but at this point he is the establishment's best hope of beating Trump. So the next question is if the Carson and Cruz voters are interested in going establishment or anti-establishment and I think there's a strong case that Cruz's supporters are anti-establishment, but Cruz also has a large evangelical following and I'm not sure which factor is going to drive them.
Obviously I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Republican Primary and I just don't know how this ends. Lindsey Graham this week referred to his party as being batshit crazy. Senator Graham is solidly conservative and also very much an establishment guy. His summation of the Republican Party is pretty much right on and that's what makes it so hard to predict which way this is going to go. The Republicans are driving off road and while that makes it an intriguing puzzle for someone like myself who enjoys the analysis it also makes it scary as all Hell. This is a party that has gone insane. I know a lot of people sit back and think that is a good thing since "there's no way they can win the White House," but that's a lazy analysis. Let me close by adding that the MacWilliams poll indicated that in regards to the authoritarian angle 39% of independents and 17% of Democrats have authoritarian leanings. Let that sink in for a bit.
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Links:
Matthew MacWilliams, The One Weird Trait That Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533.
Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba has done considerable analysis on authoritarianism and I advise reading his book: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/.
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