I think Cruz has laid bare how disingenuous his concerns about 'religious liberty' are with his suggestion of special police powers against Muslims and 'Muslim neighborhoods'. Religious liberty only applies to right wing Christians apparently.
Addendum: On a lighter note, the twitter war between Trump and Cruz over their wives is pretty amusing. In a "sad for our democracy" sort of way.
Basically it's "my wife's better looking than yours". Trump is apparently 13 years old. He has actually made Cruz look like the sympathetic, likable one.
(03-13-2016 04:45 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote: Donald Trump: "All I know is what's on the internet."
Reminds me of a Rice alum several years ago who landed a pretty important job in the Hillary Clinton State Dept., and then said with some pride in an interview: "All I know about foreign policy is what I've read in the New York Times and the New Republic."
At least the Internet offers a range of perspectives :)
D's and R's are down to a criminal, a communist, and two idiots. Vote for Gary Johnson. I see there is a poll out suggesting that he would pull double digits if it's Hillary v. Trump. At this point, that looks to me like the best possible outcome for this election. That would probably hand the election to Hillary, as Johnson would surely pull more from R's than D's. I can live with that. I'm not a fan of Hillary's, but at least she has some sense, which is more than I can say for anybody else who appears to have a chance of winning.
I really thin, the best possible outcome at this point is that libertarians pull enough votes to deny a win for either an R or a D. If that happened, both R's and D's would start paying attention to libertarian positions on the issues. And that really is the best result I can see coming from this.
(This post was last modified: 03-24-2016 05:24 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
I'm trying to think about how a Liberterian could deny a win to both the R and D. They only way to do that would be to win 1 or more states in the electoral college, and I have a hard time seeing that happen. But sending it to the House would make for some interesting politics.
Now, if the rumored Perry run takes Texas out of the R column, while preventing Clinton from winning it on a plurality, then it might get interesting. But only if Trump really does make several midwest states more comptetitive. Not sure I see this scenario playing out either.
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2016 07:24 AM by gsloth.)
Strangest election of my life. The suitability of the candidates seems to be inverse proportion to the likelihood of them winning.
I cannot vote for Hillary. When she stood on the tarmac and told the Benghazi parents they would get the video maker for this, she lost any remote chance of me settling for her.
I don't like Trump, nor do I trust him.
I don't understand Cruz, either the passion for him or the passion against him.
Sanders, in some ways, might be the alternative, if he can get the nomination. I would vote for an honest man and hope for a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats to keep his inane programs from passing.
Kasich, I think, is the only candidate left who would be a good President. But unless he somehow gets the nomination, so what?
Third Party candidates, staying home, etc, all end up being votes for Hillary. Back to the top.
This is looking to be a damned if you do, damned if you don't choice.
(03-25-2016 07:20 AM)gsloth Wrote: I'm trying to think about how a Liberterian could deny a win to both the R and D. They only way to do that would be to win 1 or more states in the electoral college, and I have a hard time seeing that happen. But sending it to the House would make for some interesting politics.
Now, if the rumored Perry run takes Texas out of the R column, while preventing Clinton from winning it on a plurality, then it might get interesting. But only if Trump really does make several midwest states more comptetitive. Not sure I see this scenario playing out either.
If Johnson is the libertarian nominee, and people are totally fed up with both Trump and Hillary, I think as a two-term governor he just might have a chance to win New Mexico. That's not many electoral votes, but it could deny victory in a very close election.
The more likely shot is a state that goes 48-47 with 5 to the libertarian. There could be an argument that either candidate wins without the libertarian. I could see several states where that kind of result could be possible.
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2016 03:43 PM by Owl 69/70/75.)
(03-25-2016 07:20 AM)gsloth Wrote: I'm trying to think about how a Liberterian could deny a win to both the R and D. They only way to do that would be to win 1 or more states in the electoral college, and I have a hard time seeing that happen. But sending it to the House would make for some interesting politics.
Now, if the rumored Perry run takes Texas out of the R column, while preventing Clinton from winning it on a plurality, then it might get interesting. But only if Trump really does make several midwest states more comptetitive. Not sure I see this scenario playing out either.
If Johnson is the libertarian nominee, and people are totally fed up with both Trump and Hillary, I think as a two-term governor he just might have a chance to win New Mexico. That's not many electoral votes, but it could deny victory in a very close election.
The more likely shot is a state that goes 48-47 with 5 to the libertarian. There could be an argument that either candidate wins without the libertarian. I could see several states where that kind of result could be possible.
We've already seen something even more than that with the 1992 election.
There were 4 states won by Bush with less than 40% of the vote in the state, and 4 states won by Clinton with less than 40%. Only 2 localities voted over 50% for a candidate, both for Clinton (Arkansas and DC).
I guess Perot probably took more from the Republican side of the ledger. Interesting that Perot actually finished 2nd in two different states (I had forgot this): Maine and Utah.
Gary Johnson is intriguing, if he does get the Libertarian nod. But even now, I'm not sure he'd take New Mexico, despite being a 2-time governor (as a Republican).
(03-09-2016 12:44 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote: Kasich and Rubio will have to drop out next Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, if not before, as I don't think either will win their respective home states. Frankly, I believe Kasich when he said he'll drop out if he doesn't win Ohio (although he said back in New Hampshire that he had to win Michigan, and we saw how that turned out last night). Kasich's next/last political hope is probably a 2020 presidential campaign, since he'll leave office as Ohio governor in 2018; basically, he doesn't have a ton left to accomplish in his political career other than the presidency. I think it's actually more imperative for Rubio to drop out now, as he is only 44, and presumably would like to have a political career that includes being a long-term senator / governor / president, rather than getting run over in his home state presidential primary, which could damage his still-young political career.
You're half-right. Rubio couldn't win Florida, so he dropped out, but Kasich did win Ohio and appears to be in to the end despite the fact that it's mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination and likely won't even get put into nomination. I think he's in it now mainly to be the vice-presidential pick.
In the time since the Florida and Ohio primaries, it's grown more likely that Trump will have the most delegates at the convention, but Kasich's continuing presence also makes it more likely that Trump won't have a majority. In that case, a deal is going to be cut and either Trump or Cruz will win a clear majority on the second ballot.
(03-10-2016 10:36 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:
(03-09-2016 02:26 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: This Republican primary really seems to be one for the ages. If you had told me even 4 years ago that, by the end of the next primary you would have Ted Cruz and Donal Trump squaring off over the nomination I would have thought you were crazy. Some over-tanned "businessman" who hosted his own reality TV show and has forcibly shaved Vince McMahon's head at a Wrestlemanie versus a sycophantic, pompous, jack*** who has made enemies, rather than friends, everywhere he went.
What a time to be alive!
I'm excited to see what next surprise we are in for.
I'm not sure who the Clinton campaign would rather run against - Trump or Cruz, but I'm sure they can't believe their luck that it looks to be one of those two. I suspect they'd pick Cruz - Trump is an unknown and might make some inroads in the upper midwest, whereas Cruz is a profoundly unlikable right wing ideologue.
Of course, that's not what the polling data says, either about the heads-up races or Cruz's likability. Right now, in a heads-up race between Clinton and Cruz polling shows it about even, whereas Clinton leads Trump, so you have to think the Clinton campaign would prefer to face Trump. However, given the fact that Trump seems to believe that, like many Group of 5 football coaches, the best defense is a good offense and Clinton's profound weaknesses as a candidate, that might be a case of being careful about what you wish for.
Quote:I think if they run Cruz and lose, they might be more open to running someone like Kasich in '20, whereas if they run Trump and he loses they might nominate a Cruz like candidate in '20 thinking they lost because Trump wasn't a real conservative.
But I've been wrong about everything this election, so feel free to ignore me.
We'll keep that in mind....
(03-11-2016 08:54 AM)gsloth Wrote: Here's an interesting statistical analysis on the Democratic primary results so far, considering a couple of factors (non-white share of voters, and region (south vs. non-south) that seem to have been decently predictive of results to date. And poll strength is not the factor.
The concluding paragraph should make you go - hmm.
Quote:Leaving these important caveats aside, our results suggest that Bernie Sanders is likely to present a strong challenge to Hillary Clinton in the remaining Democratic primaries. Clinton has had a big advantage in the nomination race thus far because so many of the contests have been in the South. After next Tuesday, however, there will be no more primaries in the South. Based on the results presented here, she will be favored over Sanders only in non-southern states in which the nonwhite share of the Democratic primary electorate is at least 40 percent. The key question may be whether the huge delegate lead she has built up by winning southern primaries by landslide margins will be enough to sustain her through the rest of the primary season.
Clinton has the nomination locked up. The superdelegates will see to that.
(03-24-2016 05:22 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: D's and R's are down to a criminal, a communist, and two idiots.
I guess in your parsing Clinton is the criminal and Sanders is the Communist, but the two idiots remain a mystery, as for obvious reasons none of the three remaining Republican candidates could be fairly described as such.
Quote:Vote for Gary Johnson. I see there is a poll out suggesting that he would pull double digits if it's Hillary v. Trump. At this point, that looks to me like the best possible outcome for this election. That would probably hand the election to Hillary, as Johnson would surely pull more from R's than D's. I can live with that. I'm not a fan of Hillary's, but at least she has some sense, which is more than I can say for anybody else who appears to have a chance of winning.
I really thin, the best possible outcome at this point is that libertarians pull enough votes to deny a win for either an R or a D. If that happened, both R's and D's would start paying attention to libertarian positions on the issues. And that really is the best result I can see coming from this.
I see it happen every presidential race. The Libertarian Party deludes itself into thinking it's relevant until reality smacks it in the form of election night returns. Robot Chicken demonstrates it rather well (ignore the commercial at the beginning):
As is well-documented in political science research, in the end people tend to come home to their parties on Election Day, no matter what promises they made about who they'd never vote for during the primaries. The fact of the matter is that the Libertarian Party has run candidates in the last 11 presidential elections and has never gained more than about 1% of the popular vote in any of them (most of them much less than 1%). If the Libertarian Party had any sort of broad appeal, it would have demonstrated it sometime in the last 40 years. It hasn't, and it won't this time.
(03-30-2016 02:29 PM)Jonathan Sadow Wrote: Clinton has the nomination locked up. The superdelegates will see to that.
I wonder why the superdelegates don't just rent a meeting hall, make their decision, and then tell the masses who to vote for.
You know, like the old days.
Which Reince Priebus may be pining for....
Even not counting the superdelegates, Sanders has a steep hill to climb to get a majority of pledged delegates. Part of the problem is the scarcity of caucuses from here on. And to get to a majority (again, not counting supers), he needs to win 57% of the remaining delegates.
(03-30-2016 08:46 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote: Well, today Trump managed to make pro-choice and pro-life groups mad at him.
That is quite an accomplishment.
(03-30-2016 08:46 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote: Well, today Trump managed to make pro-choice and pro-life groups mad at him.
That is quite an accomplishment.
Yep.
I think this combined with the statement about letting Japan, S. Korea and Saudi Arabia (?!?!?!) get nuclear weapons may finally do him in, or at least finally bring us the contested convention pundits and junkies day dream about every four years.
Edit: Rereading the transcript it's not clear what his position on Saudi Arabia having nuclear weapons is:
COOPER: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?
TRUMP: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.
COOPER: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?
TRUMP: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.
Here's the first projection from Larry Sabato's shop on the general election. It includes a generic electoral college map (Republican vs. Democrat), and then a Clinton vs. Trump assumption. Not much to quibble about yet - though it's still early.
And Jonathan, the one thing I'd say counter to your Libertarian Party assumption is to look at the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2013. Despite never having shown well before, an electorate that was presented with major party candidates from the Clinton tree/crony capitalist and a hard right/evenagelical candidate drove enough voters to go over 6% for the Libertarian candidate.
And Virginia also gave us the first hints of the Republican anger wave when the Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated during the Republican primary in 2014.
I don't believe this is going to be a standard election, and many regular electoral assumptions are going to get challenged. Not enough to elect a Libertarian president, but history isn't always going to be the guide it has been in many other recent presidential elections.
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Presidential Horse Race Thread
