Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

btw

A poll of Republican voters in the early voting state of New Hampshire conducted by public television station WBUR found that Carson's support has fallen to only 6.0 percent from 17 percent in mid-September.

Aw, that almost makes me feel sorry for him.

all the (~)bright republicans

What's a Pepsi Bright Republican?

a republican who has passed the pepsi challenge

rubio is so un-presidential, i mean look at him, listen to him speak

he's like 15 years old right?

And too thirsty. All our presidents have been well-hydrated gentlemen.

Anyway from this...

http://i.imgur.com/V8Amh5X.jpg?1

...one might be tempted to conclude that the Carson/Trump support is sloshing between the two of them (one's rise is the other's fall and vice versa).

Cruz and Rubio's shared rise to become the only "professionals" with poll traction is clearer than ever. Their rise tracks closely to the falling support of all the other bottom-tier candidates (Bush, Christie, etc.).

Or maybe not. Maybe Bush supporters are defecting to Carson and Fiorina supporters to Rubio. Who the fuck knows? But it's what we have now, so it's what gets discussed.

is Christie persona non grata cuz he hugged Obama that one time?

or is there more to it than that? I can't believe that the GOP cares about corruption/bridgegate in any meaningful way. Do they just hate a fatty?

"The hug" is one of those things much more widely circulated in right-wing infosphere than elsewhere - it stands in for a whole bunch of other stuff and it sticks precisely because his selling point is that he's a "Republican who won in a blue state," who "can get Democrats to vote for him," which with this electorate means he's suspect at the least and a traitor at worst. Which again makes me think that anybody who sees him as their first choice is not about to switch to one of the real wackos.

hug aside, Christie hasn't had a good news day in years

yeah, but since when does a GOP primary voter care about accomplishments? I guess he hasn't had a good media exposure/zinger day either

He got some nice coverage from some of the debates, but some of it was JV debate and all of it turned out to be hitting singles when he needed a home run. But he's clearly playing the "put all his chips on New Hampshire" game, figuring that if Iowa and NH get split between equally unelectable fringe candidates, the "electable" conservative who comes in 2nd in NH, after everybody wrote him off, will look like the angel of redemption.

Fat Angel of Redemption, isn't that a Paul Simon song

(He is, as of the latest polling averages, in third place in NH. If he can make the argument that there are a lot of other places like NH, his campaign might have enough legs in it still to justify how much attention pundits still keep giving him, versus the other 2-percenters.)

haha

there's at least one conflicted Trump supporter who is not on board with his Muslim ban: Rocky Suhayda, the chairman of the American Nazi Party.

In an email to Buzzfeed, Suhayda stated that he didn't think Trump would practically be able to carry out any of his plans because "'mainstream' political whores would block his every move."

“Look," he wrote, "this phrase ‘muslims’ is simply a PC code word to cover the reality of all these THIRD WORLD peoples invading OUR country.”

"Unless Trump plans on ruling by Presidential Decree, I don't see how he would implement ANY of his 'plans,' the rest of the sold out 'mainstream' political whores would block his every move," he said.

However, Suhayda did add that Trump's statements, while maybe a little insincere, echoed the sentiment of the Nazi party. “Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!

“But, and here’s the kicker - so WHAT do we DO - sit back and heartily congratulate ourselves that our viewpoints are NOT the pariahs that we have been told that they are, and get all warm and fuzzy feeling,” he continued. “OR, do we FINALLY get SERIOUS about what we are supposed to be engaged in?”

another part of christie's appeal was he is a loud angry asshole who is a dick to everyone and trump is way better at this sort of thing than christie is

haha yeah being an actual rich guy means you don't have to say you're sorry

However, Suhayda did add that Trump's statements, while maybe a little insincere, echoed the sentiment of the Nazi party. “Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!

donald trump - legitimizing the american nazi party since 2015

Trump's statements, while maybe a little insincere, echoed the sentiment of the Nazi party.

this quote is referring to the frontrunner for the republican nomination in 2016, grim lols at this garbage country

I'm coming around to this "Trump is playing a character" hypothesis, the only problem is all evidence seems to suggest the character he is playing is himself

going back and watching this again with 6 months of perspective. for some reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q61B-DyPk

never mind i watched like 30 seconds of ivanka and then like 45 of him and turned it off. never mind

did anyone expect it to come to this tho

Ivanka Trump is really not very attractive

"...a PC code word to cover the reality of all these THIRD WORLD peoples invading OUR country.”

About that "OUR country", Mr. 'Rocky' Hussein Suhayda, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.

remember when that protestor got beat up outside of trump towers or whatever

it's sad but trump looks like he was born to give a speech in front of the stars and bars

i like how trump is going to get our country back to work as if anyone would want to work for the douchebag. except for his famous reality tv show where everyone did everything they could to get hired by him

ted cruz is basically an apprentice contestant

Unretouched photo of Ivanka Trump (courtesy of Daily Mail):
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/15/03/27945EBA00000578-0-Busy_woman_In_addition_to_running_a_division_of_the_Trump_Organi-a-110_1429063594130.jpg

nah man no way

looking forward to yr critique of chelsea

yeah can we not do this please?

looking forward to yr critique of chelsea

― mookieproof

yeah just sign up for my tinyletter

remember when iran having nuclear weapons was a big deal?

Wait, what? Iran has nukes!? Sign me up for Trump! Obama, that pussy, I just new he would let those Muslims get missiles. Man, you take a couple of hours off the internet...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CV-QSkyWoAEX9JZ.jpg

yikes - http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/12/12/georgia-poll-finds-wide-gop-support-for-donald-trump-and-his-muslim-ban/ - first poll in an sec primary state i've seen (admittedly i haven't been looking, if anyone wants to show me some recent others to reassure me this is an outlier plz do), yes yes it's early but still yikes yikes yikes.

i wonder if huckabee et al regret not going full fascist when they had the chance (in previous election cycles)--look at what kind of numbers they'd be picking up.

ehhh, they needed eight years of people seething about a black president to really get it worked up. plus the influence of that whole movement agitating regarding obama's birth certificate - that was pretty key. the GOP should try to find a guy who'd been loudly and stubbornly banging on about that since obama's first term - now there's somebody who could be a contender for this primary.

I don't think other politicians could get away with donald trump's shtick. I think the machismo and refusal to apologize is probably a bigger aspect of his appeal than the anti-immigration stuff or anything else approximating a policy stance. like they love that he says-it-like-it-is but he probably could be saying-it-like-it-is on less nationalist issues and getting the same response. these people want a putin, and mike huckabee was never gonna be putin.

(also they have donors to answer to.)

in b4 someone makes mike huckabee shirtless on horse joke

a lot of the problem with reassurance is that we were all wrong about trump, we misunderestimated how far he would go, and as a result the natural response is to treat anybody who predicted his downfall- including, in some cases, ourselves- as inherently untrustworthy. if we were wrong about trump back in june, why should anybody believe us now?

and the answer is because we acknowledge our mistakes, we admit them, and we learn from them. saying trump cannot be president is not desperate hindbrain wishful thinking backed up by distortions of evidence, it's based on, well, basically everything. i don't even need to go over all the evidence against it, because you are well aware of the tremendous mountain of evidence against him. all anybody needs to do in order to be convinced that he can't be president is to choose to believe it.

that doesn't mean there aren't a tremendous number of things we don't know, that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of danger, uncertainty, and confusion, that doesn't mean that national and global fascism isn't a serious threat. we have a lot of things to worry about, and i'm not sure any of us are sure exactly about which things exactly those are, but we can say with a high degree of confidence that "donald trump might be president" is not one of those things.

one trap he's been setting for himself by being mr. #1 invincible look at these polls I'm a winner people love me...well, if he loses iowa and new hampshire, he's lost the whole campaign narrative. even losing iowa would probably be enough to turn on his sore loser side, which is so unpleasant that it might even turn off his own supporters.

Other politicians get away w Trump's shtick all the time, it's not as if he has a lockdown on political assholery. The thought that he is a laughable fringe element and not symbolizing the rotten mainstream core of the modern GOP is comforting. The evidence is that he is doing well in polls, better than anyone else.

re: Georgia - really really hard to say about it being an outlier poll or not since there's hardly any other data to compare it to. RCP only has eight georgia polls total for the cycle, going back to one with huckabee leading in may. the last couple they show were from november 11th and the period 10/15-10/26. out of their set, FWIW, the landmark polls have consistently shown a bigger margin for trump than the other ones. i don't doubt that he's winning but it's entirely possible that that walloping huge margin reflects a house effect or methodological choice. annoyingly, landmark provides the web with only a headline-grabbing Q1, nothing on method or any other questions (if there were any). would be interesting to know a "is there anybody you wouldn't vote for?" question for the same sample set.

a stat likely to be distorted: in this poll, african-americans broke more clearly for trump, with 56.1% support, than whites did, with 43.3% support. the catch: there were only 16 african americans in the sample of 800, because, well, georgia republican party.

Other politicians get away w Trump's shtick all the time, it's not as if he has a lockdown on political assholery.

They get away with it but I question how much they're doing so in a way that's really appealing to people in the same way as Trump's kicking ass formula. I agree with iatee. And I was saying yesterday that I could see Carson sticking around because he's so outside the box. The rest of them are a bunch of insiders. Rubio and Cruz might have gotten some recent upticks, but we'll see how far that goes.

xp lol

New poll with Cruz leading in Iowa:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/12/13/fox-news-poll-cruz-trump-ahead-in-iowa-clinton-holds-caucus-lead.html

Supposedly an "unprecedented" spike. I'm fine with Cruz winning the nomination. I dislike him the most by far, so good for staying engaged. And I don't think his chance of winning a general is significantly better than Trump's.

nothing wrong with that unretouched pic of Ivanka, she's very beautiful.