Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

what's the point of being a country if everything is left up to the states and the rights afforded to you change drastically the moment your car goes over an imaginary line?

there were a few arguments about this among men in knee highs, powdered wigs, and beaver skin tricorne hats back in the day. those men were my fathers, and everything is normal

lol. kasich is either a true-blue anti-choice republican or doing a darn good impression of one. see: his whole track record as governor of ohio. if he secretly has pro-choice views what difference would it make?

neanderthal, not sure i follow how income tax should be up to the states...? that would kinda radically change our whole government; are you advocating the repeal of the 16th amendment or am i misreading you?

I meant state income tax, not fed (didn't specify so that's on me)

Yeah, there is literally zero evidence that John Kasich's views on abortion are even a half inch to the left of Randall Terry's.

(I don't know what Kasich personally believes, to be clear, just that I think far less Republican politicians are vehemently pro-life than claim to be these days)

re: income tax: gotcha gotcha.

re: Kasich etc: sure, sure, I see that - I'm just not sure why it matters! I mean it's sorta like saying Clinton might secretly be in favor of a 90% marginal tax rate and amnesty for most of the prison population, but if she's never going to act even remotely like that's her position, aren't we just writing fanfic?

pro choice is much more mainstream an opinion than 90% marginal tax rate and amnesty for most of the prison population. it's more like saying she's secretly pro-legaliziing recreational marijuana (something with a lot of mainstream approval) which i would not be surprised if she were.

Guys, John Kasich is an active and effective vanguard in the fight to obliterate women's reproductive rights. He's done a lot of evil work in Ohio. He's just smart enough to know that doing so contradicts his "I'm the middle of the road adult" image so he's spectacularly tight-lipped about it.

^^^^

please watch the video i posted. he pushed forward a provision in ohio that prevents rape crisis centers from sharing information about where women could obtain an abortion.

ENERGY FOOD otm. and i'm not sure why it matters how mainstream the opinion is. the point is it's an opinion that runs contradictory to everything they actually advocate for and work on so it's totally irrelevant to hypothesize that secretly they like the idea. i guess it would matter if they saw public opinion changing and followed the winds to their 'true belief,' but then a) their track record as an opponent of these things would presumably be a problem with this same public and b) if they're inclined to just turn with the wind, then them having inner beliefs doesn't enter into it anyway.

I'm just pointing out how amusing it is to see him ducking the very same questions Trump got nailed for. You would think, whatever his personal belief, that by now, after 30 or 40 years of doing this, he'd have an answer formulated (with regards to the punishment question) that he could trot out in his sleep. But he didn't.

not only that, he/they slipped it into a really crucial budget bill iirc xp to treesh

It jibes with why I can't stand him. He's trying to thread the needle beyond reason and beyond fairness--he's won virtually nothing to this point, he's been gingerly stepping around everything for months, and his only rationale for hanging around are the polls he keeps citing that he runs ahead of Clinton. I compared him to a vulture, and someone pointed out I must really hate vultures.

i guess you could argue that a politician who "secretly" is pro-choice would eagerly adopt that position if the tides were to turn politically, like obama did with gay marriage. also, perhaps it wouldn't be as big a priority to him as others when it came to appointing supreme court justices or whatever. all of this is irrelevant with kasich of course because he is a dyed in the wool anti-choicer

xp to doctor casino

I don't get why anyone would think Kasich was secretly soft on abortion unless it was because the narrative requires that there be a "moderate" in the race. There used to be a moderate in the race -- Chris Christie, and nobody liked him. Now there isn't. Kasich is basically the same guy as Scott Walker -- equally hostile to unions, probably slightly MORE sincerely devoted to keeping women from getting abortions, seemingly smarter and more politically skilled.

the fuckin' states-rights bullshit is always bullshit. what's the point of being a country if everything is left up to the states and the rights afforded to you change drastically the moment your car goes over an imaginary line?

Patrick Henry to thread

I think his problem with actually answering the question stems from the gap between his right-wing track record, and the friendly MOR Republican he's running as - and more generally, between the answers and rationalizations favored by the right-wing constituents, and those adopted by the "don't like abortions as such but don't want them to be illegal" crowd. The stuff about abortion being murder - but that the real criminals are the conspiracy of sadistic murder-loving abortion-providers who are the ones who have to be stopped cause we LOVE the mothers - plays on the right-wing because it papers over the anti-choice position's misogyny and basic untenability... but this isn't how most Americans actually see the situation I think, and the same rhetoric won't work there.

I think it's also the case that frankly this question doesn't get asked as much as it should. Roe v. Wade has been the law for decades, so really getting into the hypothetical of "wait, so how would this work if abortions were outlawed?" doesn't happen as much as it should. I like the question being asked though; it exposes a lot of uncomfortable lapses in anti-choice agitation. These are pertinent in the present-day world since these assholes have been so effective, at the state level, at implementing draconian schemes to chip away at Roe, or remove abortion as an option, in ways that to less boneheaded Supreme Courts would be flagrantly underhanded schemes to circumvent the law. They're creating huge sectors of the country where illegal abortion has to be coming back in a big way, so they need to have answers.

Kasich does have a unique selling point in the race though: not that he's a "moderate" (though I think he's happy to coast on this impression), but that he's a generic Republican. That comes with some perception of "electability" which dovetails with the "moderate" thing, but the main point is that if you still would like to cast your vote for someone who is not Donald Fucking Trump or Ted Fucking Cruz, you can do that.

That's absolutely how he's framing it, I just hate the idea of "You've resoundingly rejected me in every primary except a couple"--he even finished behind Rubio in one of them, after Rubio had dropped out--"but you should hand the nomination to me because I poll really well in a hypothetical match-up." I mean, if what he wants to happen actually were to happen, there'd be so much outrage within his party that his hypothetical poll numbers would plummet, even if he were able to draw well from independents who don't like Clinton.

there's no way he thinks he could be elected president. he is still in there bc the gop wants to salvage some of its hemorrhaging legitimacy.

Doesn't think he can win the nomination, or doesn't think he can win again Clinton? I don't believe at all that he's hanging around out of selfless loyalty to the party, and that this has been arranged with the RNC or whoever behind closed doors. In the first place, I'm not sure how his presence helps the party when the one candidate who superficially seems moderate and reasonable (forget for a second the question of whether he actually is) is getting killed by the two guys who don't.

i think he thinks he can win the nomination through brokered convention shenanigans, but not the presidency

i think his presence has some advantages for the party. he reminds voters who are thinking of defecting that "they all aren't really like this" or whatever.

pretty sure elements within the gop are planning to lay low and rebuild over the next few election cycles. i cannot see a scenario this fall that doesn't have them losing the presidency and at least the senate.

The gop def dont want him in the race anymore - voters arent voting for him and party apparatchiks are complaining about his refusal to drop out

do they actually want cruz?

in any case, even if the party doesn't want him, in his mind he thinks that he could be selected as the nominee by making the argument that the gop should salvage some legitimacy. he has to know that he wouldn't win the general. the trump and cruz voters would be soooo mad

There's no way to know for sure how ego-blinded Kasich is, but a national campaign is such a grind that a truly discouraged candidate won't keep going for long once they've lost heart. It was amazing the Jeb! stayed in as long as he did. By contrast, Kasich still looks to me like a man with hope.

I was thinking today that I wonder if Rubio has had second thoughts, now that it seems very likely there'll be an open convention (think he dropped out when it looked very likely Trump would reach 1,237). It's a bit of a catch-22. If it were an open convention, I think the party would much rather go with him than Trump or Cruz. But if he hadn't dropped out--and I'd have check this against states that voted after he left--maybe Trump would have continued winning with 35%.

I'm not even so sure how Kasich helps #neverTrump anymore. It made sense initially but if he were to drop now, Maryland and Pennsylvania both might go Cruz...he's siphoning away votes in Penn.

So he must really be banking on somehow being the brokered candidate but at this point the RNC is less likely to look at how well he's polling against Cruz now vs how well he isn't doing in the primary. It'd be a much bigger effort to galvanize support around a guy nobody's cared about for months than to build support around a guy who kind of has a base that they could hopefully mold into a less extreme platform.

IMO they should run a smear campaign saying Kasich freed Willie Hortons nephew or something and just peel away his votes

Xpost I think for sure Trump isn't free falling as bad if he stayed in. Not just the vote-splitting....not surprisingly Trump's performance has been much worse since he doesn't have an easy bully target to pick on and can't benefit as much from every candidate fighting amongst each other anymore

i've given my kasich theories way upthread somewhere but basically i think he thinks there is a non-zero (if pretty pathetic) chance of getting the nom at the convention as the one guy nobody really hates. this requires him to do better than he's currently doing, actually win a few more races, look credible - - - and it also requires cruz playing ball as VP despite coming in with way more delegates which seems like a VERY slim chance knowing how cruz rolls. kasich's chances here would be better if delegates really were tied together as blocs and there were a limited number of people you had to sway to win over these big batches of people. in kasich's favor here is that probably most of the "establishment" wheeler-dealers and persuaders will be on his side in this effort. they're obviously not in full control of the party but they probably have more sway over delegates and elected state politicians as people who can make or break your later career etc. the kind of people that are in jeb's rolodex, for whatever that's worth.

plan B for kasich is losing, but coming away as the obvious heir apparent in 2020 after a crash-and-burn 2016, here on the non-zero chance that the party kinda gets its shit together and goes "man we fucked up by nominating a crazy guy, we better change the rules this time or whatever to keep the trumps and cruzes of the world out." if he ran a "principled" campaign as an "electable" "moderate" republican, a "compassionate conservative," whatever, he'd be pretty well-positioned in four years. it's a long shot but a lot less long than it was when he started the race.

i don't think he's doing a particularly good job at building up to either of these things, and they're both kinda making lemonade out of some serious lemons, but they're not horrible master plans. rubio's problem was that he and kasich were effectively competing for that same slot, and kasich had it in him to at least win one big winner-take-all state and rubio didn't even have that. after a string of underperformances the entire time, rubio just looked like a loser and wasn't about to turn that around. if he were still in the race it'd look even worse for both of them.

I think there's a good chance trump causes some sort of disaster if he's ahead on delegates and the party doesn't give him the nomination. but I think that becomes a sure thing if it goes to kasich, it wouldn't be hard to get a lot of voters stirred up if the party handed it to the guy with the least support. the end result could possibly hurt the party as much as a trump ticket would.

these are people who already hate the gop brand

My own theory: once Kasich pocketed the Ohio delegation, he realized he could be a real force in a contested convention, but he'd have to stay in the race to use that muscle - not to win the nomination outright, but to win valuable concessions and maybe the VP spot. He's going to let his chips ride and see what the roulette wheel brings him.

Xpost Yea Kasich's sole bargaining chips are "you guys don't HATE me" (meh) and "CURRENTLY I'M THE ONLY ONE BEATING HILLARY IN NATIONAL POLLS" which would be banking the Super Bowl on a QB in Week 5 appears to match up well with the other contender's defense. Neither are compelling except to people who already like Kasich or people that are really desperate

*who in Week 5

the GOP might be really desperate, is the thing. and you do have to go back to some of those states where both rubio and kasich were polling kinda okay, and combined looked competitive with trump (esp. california). kasich actually winning those seems like a slim chance to me, especially if he's not campaigning his ass off (and there's not been much sign of that, that i've seen)... but it would really help him out a lot. there's almost no polling information on most of the races since rubio dropped out; maybe kasich has internal polls suggesting places where he could be more of a contender than we think. remember that the CW was that cruz was more or less running out of really good cruz states - it could be that the spread of delegates in june doesn't look so lopsided with kasich way at the bottom.

i guess there is the chance that he's playing to be ted cruz's VP slot but does anybody want that gig given cruz's chances in the fall? talk about a career-killer.

it's true that there's very little polling in most states (one of the more frustrating things about the post-Rubio dropout is we barely know what it's done to the race yet outside of the Wisconsin poll)

The only way I see Kasich being a possibility in 2020 would be if Clinton beats Trump or Cruz handily, goes on to have a more or less successful first term, and the Republicans feel 2020 is more or less a write-off. I could see Kasich winning a hollowed-out field, where the best candidates (and who would that be? no idea) decide not to run. But if they lose this time and have a winnable election in 2020, I can't see them ever turning back to Kasich. I think Santorum had delusions that he was next in line this year, and what a colossal miscalculation that was.

Santorum had delusions that his infamous 'website' might finally come down

i guess there is the chance that he's playing to be ted cruz's VP slot but does anybody want that gig given cruz's chances in the fall? talk about a career-killer.

being vp on a losing ticket isn't the worst, you cement your place as a nationally recognized politician and get granted front runner status for the next election.

cf the establishment guys publicly thirsting for paul ryan as speaker / "consensus pick" nominee at the convention or whatever

That's only actually worked once though since the war, where the losing VP got the nomination next time: Mondale in 1980, which is a special case, really, seeing as he'd already served a term as VP in '76. I can't see any instance of it happening otherwise--they either run and lose, or don't run at all.

Winning VPs, yes.

xxpost some betting markets have his odds as better than Kasich (albeit the ones more manipulated by pump 'n dump but w/e)

NBC News
April 1 at 10:20pm ·
"At this moment the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way," Donald J. Trump said 2 days after telling MSNBC he thinks abortion should be illegal.

lol cos that's what Republicans treasure in their candidate, a guy who says "welp law's the law, caint do nothin bout it"

http://joshspilker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-22-at-8.39.13-PM.png

-James Hetfield, Creeping Death Party

sorry, "Part-ehh-ehhhhh-oh-whoooa!"