Marco Rubio is not doing well. Just for the record I had figured that Rubio would end up the nominee. My thinking was that Jeb! Bush was weak from the get go and that the establishment and elites in the Republican Party would flood Rubio's way and with their money and connections he would get bullied into the nomination, but that hasn't happened. Trump and Cruz have really over achieved in this campaign cycle.
Rubio has just never taken off as a candidate. Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com posits that Rubio never had a base to build off. That could certainly be true. He could be a boutique candidate. On March 8th Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, and Mississippi had primaries and that's a pretty diverse group of states. Rubio didn't land a single delegate out of the four. Since the start of the primaries we've had caucuses or primaries in twenty-four states and territories. These states swing from liberal leaning northern states to ultra-conservative southern states and Rubio has only won Minnesota and Puerto Rico.
Nate Silver feels that Rubio's core supporters are educated conservatives and to be honest that is more or less the definition of the Republican establishment. Educated conservatives, politicians and political operatives are basically the establishment group. The elites are really the billionaire class funding it all. But what it looks to me is that Rubio has the establishment vote and only the establishment vote and that should scare the hell out of the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment doesn't even have the sway in their own party to drive their chosen candidate to the nomination.
Rubio's strategy seems to be to hold out to the convention and then try to be the consensus candidate. He may also be hoping that as more liberal states have their primaries that he seems to do better with those states, but he is running as a conservative so he's not going to pick up many moderate voters except as a protest against Cruz and Trump. Right now Rubio is trailing Trump in Florida polls by double digits and Rubio is from Florida. The one thing that he does offer is a block on Cruz and Trump in gaining the necessary delegates to go into the convention as the outright winner. But if he's hoping to get to the convention and win the nomination win a brokered fashion there's the phantom of the backlash that will occur if Trump goes into the convention with the lead and loses the nomination.
Showing posts with label Rubio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rubio. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Sunday, March 6, 2016
#NeverTrump
Last week the Republican Establishment went full bore into it's anti-Trump attacks. They rolled out Mitt Romney in an anti-Trump speech on March 3rd. The New York Times published the text of the speech and you can read it yourself. Mitt Romney as you remember was the Republican Nominee in 2012 who lost the election to President Barack Obama. After Romney's loss one of the critiques was that he was insufficiently conservative. So who does the establishment roll out, but Mr Establishment himself who was dismissed by many conservatives for failing to be sufficiently orthodox. There was also some discussion and I don't know how serious it was of drafting Mitt for a dark horse run as a last ditch attempt to counter Trump. Somewhere over the last week the hashtag #NeverTrump was spun up on the web.
I don't know who started #NeverTrump, but I really have no clue what that means. A few strategies to get there have been floated. The one that is currently underway has been to support a candidate and try to get voters to support that person. As mentioned previously the establishment backed Marco Rubio once Jeb! Bush dropped out. Since then we've had two batches of primaries with Rubio doing poorly in both. He finished second or third on Super Tuesday and then on Semi-Super Saturday he finished third across the board. Rubio made a big splash in Florida when he ran for Senate and he was a Tea Party darling in those days. Ted Cruz did really well on Semi-Super Saturday coming in first in two caucuses and second in two others. So I'm wondering how much the establishment label is hurting Rubio, but if you were holding out for Rubio to be the #NeverTrump solution you probably need to look elsewhere.
There's Ted Cruz as the #NeverTrump candidate and based on Semi-Super Saturday it may be that some people are voting for him, but the establishment and elites in the Republican Party hate Cruz with a passion. They view him as an opportunist who will do anything to get to advance his career. So from an establishment point of view Cruz like going from the fire into the frying pan; you won't get burned, but you are still cooked. Cruz is however a palatable alternative for authoritarian evangelicals with an anti-establishment bent. The two states Cruz won are Kansas and Maine and I'm not going to put much weight on either of those states with states with much higher populations that do actual primary elections and not caucuses coming up.
Another option for the #NeverTrump faction is the concept of the contested election. In this strategy you don't have to win the nomination in the primaries, but you just have to make sure that Trump doesn't. When you get to the convention you won't have a clear winner and then the wheeling and dealing can begin and the establishment can engineer someone else to be the nominee. There's a huge danger here. Imagine what Trump's followers are going to think. They are angry because they feel that they've been screwed by just about everyone and they are incredibly anti-establishment. They are going to view this as the establishment stealing the election and invalidating them and their votes. And then who gets the nomination? The establishment doesn't like Trump, but it also doesn't like Cruz. If Cruz has the second highest number of delegates what happens? The establishment is pretty much screwed here. They could get #NeverTrump, but end up with Cruz or an emasculated Rubio or Kasich and an open civil war in the party.
The last option I can see is that Trump wins and the establishment runs a third party option in the general election. I don't see this happening, but it is an option. This is where Mitt Romney might come back into the picture or maybe Michael Bloomberg. There's really only a couple people who could fill the role, but basically it's splitting the Republican vote.
My opinion is that the people who say #NeverTrump are either not thinking things to the end of simply throwing a tantrum. #NeverTrump means finding another candidate to beat Trump out right in the primary or splitting the Republican vote in the general election. If you split the Republican vote in the general election you are giving the election to the Democratic Party. So win the primary outright or throw the election to Hillary Clinton. That's really what #NeverTrump means and I bet most people are either not thinking it out or are simply locking onto a catch phrase and lying to themselves.
I don't know who started #NeverTrump, but I really have no clue what that means. A few strategies to get there have been floated. The one that is currently underway has been to support a candidate and try to get voters to support that person. As mentioned previously the establishment backed Marco Rubio once Jeb! Bush dropped out. Since then we've had two batches of primaries with Rubio doing poorly in both. He finished second or third on Super Tuesday and then on Semi-Super Saturday he finished third across the board. Rubio made a big splash in Florida when he ran for Senate and he was a Tea Party darling in those days. Ted Cruz did really well on Semi-Super Saturday coming in first in two caucuses and second in two others. So I'm wondering how much the establishment label is hurting Rubio, but if you were holding out for Rubio to be the #NeverTrump solution you probably need to look elsewhere.
There's Ted Cruz as the #NeverTrump candidate and based on Semi-Super Saturday it may be that some people are voting for him, but the establishment and elites in the Republican Party hate Cruz with a passion. They view him as an opportunist who will do anything to get to advance his career. So from an establishment point of view Cruz like going from the fire into the frying pan; you won't get burned, but you are still cooked. Cruz is however a palatable alternative for authoritarian evangelicals with an anti-establishment bent. The two states Cruz won are Kansas and Maine and I'm not going to put much weight on either of those states with states with much higher populations that do actual primary elections and not caucuses coming up.
Another option for the #NeverTrump faction is the concept of the contested election. In this strategy you don't have to win the nomination in the primaries, but you just have to make sure that Trump doesn't. When you get to the convention you won't have a clear winner and then the wheeling and dealing can begin and the establishment can engineer someone else to be the nominee. There's a huge danger here. Imagine what Trump's followers are going to think. They are angry because they feel that they've been screwed by just about everyone and they are incredibly anti-establishment. They are going to view this as the establishment stealing the election and invalidating them and their votes. And then who gets the nomination? The establishment doesn't like Trump, but it also doesn't like Cruz. If Cruz has the second highest number of delegates what happens? The establishment is pretty much screwed here. They could get #NeverTrump, but end up with Cruz or an emasculated Rubio or Kasich and an open civil war in the party.
The last option I can see is that Trump wins and the establishment runs a third party option in the general election. I don't see this happening, but it is an option. This is where Mitt Romney might come back into the picture or maybe Michael Bloomberg. There's really only a couple people who could fill the role, but basically it's splitting the Republican vote.
My opinion is that the people who say #NeverTrump are either not thinking things to the end of simply throwing a tantrum. #NeverTrump means finding another candidate to beat Trump out right in the primary or splitting the Republican vote in the general election. If you split the Republican vote in the general election you are giving the election to the Democratic Party. So win the primary outright or throw the election to Hillary Clinton. That's really what #NeverTrump means and I bet most people are either not thinking it out or are simply locking onto a catch phrase and lying to themselves.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
The Republican Primary
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.
----------------------------
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/.
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.
----------------------------
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/.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
South Carolina Republican Primary
Trump's path to the Republican nomination got a lot clearer yesterday. The Republican Primary in South Carolina was held on February 20th (the Democratic Primary is next weekend). Trump came in first with 32.5% of the vote, Rubio came in second with 22.5%, Cruz came in third with 22.3%, and Bush, Kasich and Carson finished with under 8% each.
Kasich and Carson are finished. I expect Kasich's support to flow to Rubio and Carson's to Trump. Bush will hold on until Super Tuesday. The elite and establishment will consolidate now around Rubio and the money will flow his way. We've seen the start of Cruz attacking Rubio as a creature of the establishment and I would expect that to increase at this point. He's going to get hammered on that point and will become radioactive with the base which is distinctly anti-establishment and anti-elite.
Cruz is going to hang on for a while, but he'll be toast before long. He uses a lot of dirty tricks and he's doesn't come across as particularly moral. He's a career opportunist and this is his high water mark. I'm not entirely sure where Cruz's support goes when he drops out. I think a best guess would be a split between Trump and Rubio, but I'm not sold on that. Trump has suprised me in that he has a fair number of Evangelical Christians voting for him. It's possible that they rally to Trump's banner.
Of course I'm in pundit mode and even though I've been mostly correct so far (you'll have to take my word for it since I was still on blogger hiatus as of last week), I'm painfully aware of how hard it's been to make predictions about this race. Six months ago I wouldn't have guessed Trump vs Rubio for the nomination. I would have guess Bush with Trump playing the spoiler. This race is a dream come true for people who enjoy political analysis.
UPDATE: Well, one of the problems with not following the news closely is that Bush dropped out already. So I'm off on the timing on that one. I really thought he was going to wait for Super Tuesday.
Kasich and Carson are finished. I expect Kasich's support to flow to Rubio and Carson's to Trump. Bush will hold on until Super Tuesday. The elite and establishment will consolidate now around Rubio and the money will flow his way. We've seen the start of Cruz attacking Rubio as a creature of the establishment and I would expect that to increase at this point. He's going to get hammered on that point and will become radioactive with the base which is distinctly anti-establishment and anti-elite.
Cruz is going to hang on for a while, but he'll be toast before long. He uses a lot of dirty tricks and he's doesn't come across as particularly moral. He's a career opportunist and this is his high water mark. I'm not entirely sure where Cruz's support goes when he drops out. I think a best guess would be a split between Trump and Rubio, but I'm not sold on that. Trump has suprised me in that he has a fair number of Evangelical Christians voting for him. It's possible that they rally to Trump's banner.
Of course I'm in pundit mode and even though I've been mostly correct so far (you'll have to take my word for it since I was still on blogger hiatus as of last week), I'm painfully aware of how hard it's been to make predictions about this race. Six months ago I wouldn't have guessed Trump vs Rubio for the nomination. I would have guess Bush with Trump playing the spoiler. This race is a dream come true for people who enjoy political analysis.
UPDATE: Well, one of the problems with not following the news closely is that Bush dropped out already. So I'm off on the timing on that one. I really thought he was going to wait for Super Tuesday.
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