(03-06-2016 11:38 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  What republicans need is somebody who will give voice to the frustration that the Reagan Democrat voters are feeling without being such a jerk that he/she pisses everybody off. Trump/Cruz voice the frustration but turn everybody else off. Rubio/Kasich don't capture the frustration of the Reagan Democrats. I really thought Rubio was going to do that early on, and with his ability to appeal to the mainline republicans he would have been a formidable candidate. But he bungled it badly. Kasich apparently has done pretty well with Reagan Democrats in Ohio, but can't seem to translate that nationally.

The Reagan Democrats are never going to like Hillary, and they really aren't going to like Bernie. Putting them with mainline republicans would be a winning strategy, but no republican seems capable of executing it.

I think the real problem with republicans is that they have not successfully linked the march of jobs offshore to the higher costs, higher tax, more regulation approach that democrats want to double down on. I don't know why they can't. It's so obvious to me, and it should be obvious to them. But aside from broad generalities like "job creators," they really haven't done much with it. I think you could start by saying, "You've got a new deal that's going to make you a lot of money, would you rather pay 50% tax or 20% tax on your net income?" I think most people grasp that concept fairly easily. And I think most people would be surprised to find out that, despite being very much a lower tax jurisdiction than any other overall, we manage to extract higher taxes than other countries on precisely the groups that are moving jobs offshore. I think republicans could sell a concept of a broader safety net, with a guaranteed minimum income and universal private health care like Bismarck, that was paid for by a tax structure that encouraged businesses to bring jobs here instead of send them away, and accompanied by cleaning up a lot of counterproductive regulations that drive businesses offshore too. That was kind of Ross Perot's plan, but nobody has gone that way since him.

so tell me how trump/kasich isn't what your should want based on the above....

(03-07-2016 03:10 PM)CoastGuardHawk06 Wrote:  I don't know how it plays out in the end, but I could see this...

1. RNC brokered convention

2. Trump frozen out of nomination

3. Civil unrest

4. Obama declares martial law

5. Rise of dictatorships controlling the USA.

1. suicide
2. plausible
3. already in the media
4. not a snowballs....if....then 5
5. almost plausible at this point....the wealth states now have major power....

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/07/politics/m...index.html

Some Rubio advisers are telling him to cut and run.

Not surprisingly, the debate is about Marco's political future, not about the good of the country.

From the article:

Most of the senator's advisers agree he does not have a path to the nomination and some are advising him to get out ahead of the March 15 primary.

Sources within the campaign also say the pressure will only continue to mount following an expected disappointing showing Tuesday, when voters in Michigan, Mississippi, Hawaii and Idaho make their picks in the GOP primary.

"Not going to have a great day is an understatement," one campaign source said.

If Marco is a multiplier and not a contender, would it be better to join Cruz or Kasich? If Rubio drops out before Fl and joins Kasich, they could have just enough to almost tie in Fl and win Ohio decisively. At that point, there is momentum.
Momentum is a powerful thing.

At present, it will be Trump with a lead going into the convention. Cruz might have a chance, but if Texas was in May, he'd be in the same boat with Rubio. The map has a lot of NY-esque value states remaining. Unless one of them wins some winner-take-all states, we are probably looking at Trump and then Cruz.

The reality is that you cannot simply take the nomination from the frontrunner going into the convention without splitting the party. And, Cruz has to be careful. If he plays with the establishment to upend Trump, he also will lack credibility with the Trump voters to sway them his way. A good deal of his voters are coming out because they believe they have a chance to break the establishment. Being a co-conspirator with them will simply turn them off.

Personally, I think we know more on the 15th. If Trump takes the winner take all states, it will be virtually impossible to surpass him before the convention. The only hope is to wound your front runner in hopes to stall him from obtaining a majority and then stealing it from him at a convention contrary to the outcome from the voters.

(03-07-2016 03:04 PM)bullet Wrote:  Rubio is a "special snowflake." Best short description of Rubio yet. If he hadn't run in the first place, we would have a very different race, one not so dominated by Donald Trump as the rest of the party wouldn't have been so splintered.

http://theweek.com/articles/610852/real-...le-failure

...."However subliminal, his sense of upwardly mobile entitlement was weirdly off-putting and perversely reminiscent of the entitled yes-kid who thinks he should get what he wants because he knows exactly how to give his teachers and school administrators exactly what they want. Rather than embodying the 20th-century Republican story of increase earned through luck and pluck, he became an avatar of the 21st-century striver whose stock in trade is his special snowflakehood."

You're absolutely right Bullet. The only thing keeping Tramp in the race is the fact that those two of Rubio and Kasich are running a losing race. For what reason they don't opt out is only in their mind.

I'll bet the few delegates that they have would jump to Cruz in a New York minute. They're not dumb enough to go for the despot Tramp.