I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

the republican party's death is going to be due to its inability to produce not-crazy candidates who still get support from the base and not due to some impossible political environment, sure. but they're going to have to placate their own crazier-than-ever voters 4 years from now too.

I used "Republicans" to mean people who vote in Republican primaries, too.

― clemenza, Thursday, August 18, 2016 1:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think just some of the Republican leaders claimed they'd self reflect. Everyone else appears to have doubled down

They effectively nominated him by taking their hands off the wheel during the primaries

Jeb! spent cash on media buys like money was going out of style and still couldn't crack the top three in any primary (iirc). Where do you think all that his came from if not the Republican establishment and what was its intended effect if not to steer the process?

i don't know what they could have done differently in the past year, short of completely changing the nomination process in a transparent emergency disenfranchisement. as djp says, the people they trained (over eight years, or possibly forty-eight) wanted a guy like this and the party didn't have any other guys like this to offer them.

yeah the official gop plan following the 2012 loss was to increase outreach to minorities, pass immigration reform etc.

voters decided to nominate the guy who retweets white supremacists

I get where Dan I. is coming from, and I also agree totally with those who reliably point out on these threads that a party controlling most of the statehouses and with a reasonable shot of holding on to both houses of Congress is hardly a dead duck. BUT... I do think the focus on what might have happened had the other candidates won the nomination sort of misses the point. They didn't win the nomination, and while I've argued before that this has a LOT to do with the particular dynamics of that overcrowded race, etc., it's also true that Trump won precisely because of certain forces or structural tendencies within the party that are not going to go away. They've spent a couple decades building a house divided against itself and it's just that this year they heard a loud crack, looked up, and noticed the roof beam sagging and the walls starting to lean inwards. A party that can produce Trump in one year, whatever the circumstances, is not one that can just stiffen up and get its act together for the next go-round IMO. There are some real cleavages in this coalition.

Just sayin', we're seeing their nu-Goldwater now, but they're going to find someone to be their (hideous but electable) nu-Nixon

also they might hold both houses of congress and most statehouses and still be in irrevocable decline - they're trending towards the oblivion, not already there

(hideous but electable) nu-Nixon

sure sounds like Cruz!

it def sounds like cruz to cruz

Much will depend on the Trump News Network's choice of candidate in 4 years.

i stand by my comments from a week or two back about the republicans, i do think as they're currently constructed they are in yes irrevocable decline. i think it's masked by clinton being the less-than-ideal candidate at this time. i think if you had an obama out there against trump, this would be like obama vs keyes in 2004.

thing is the dems are adapting well with the times and the republicans have had no answer for it except dog whistles and wikileaks and benghazi.

this isn't to say the republicans won't adapt as well and get back what they've lost, but they've ceded so much ground within their own party to the lunatics that they've lost control. but obviously they can come back, can't assume they're dead.

given his 'murderers, rapists and drug dealers' comments, I's say 20% is a surprisingly strong showing. suspect even.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Thursday, August 18, 2016 12:08 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think so. If you figure in class systems (Americanized Hispanics who view new immigrants & illegals with great disdain), gun nuts, and religious types, that feels like 20%.

We've talked this through before I think, but I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a more-electable Trump. You sand off the rough edges and turn him into more of a conventionally charismatic public speaker, and you lose all that carnivalesque rally appeal, the sense for his fans that their outsider man is up there just saying the stuff that comes into his head, and they happen to agree with all of it. You wouldn't lose all those people but the "phenomenon" wouldn't be there and I don't think you can count on them turning out to vote.

Plus, Trump's very odiousness raises so many hackles outside his base, and that's part of the appeal. He trolls on the people's behalf, and every negative story out there confirms the fans' sense that he's really getting under the skin of the MSM, the liberals, the coddled college kids, whatever.

But, it may also be that without a network superstar to bring in the gawkers, there's a crumbling of support as aging republicans die and younger voters don't give as much of a fuck about the social aspects.

(xp basically what nomar and Doctor Casino said)

Re: Cruz In Texas & His Re-Electablity

I guess a lot of this will be up to how bad Trump fails in November, but I still maintain he has a shot--He's up in '18, which is a midterm election (smaller turnout) and is paired with our gubernatorial race. Cruz has worked in a somewhat united front with Abbott & Patrick; if that's maintained, I don't see how PERRY* of all people could break it up. A bigger problem would be Julian Castro, who has been suggested as a Dem opponent against Cruz '18.

*I mean, seriously, enough with this fucking clown.

Trump won the nomination and got as far as he did because pre-existing fame. Only someone like, I dunno, Hulk Hogan could follow that recipe and get similar results

Which is not to suggest that outrageous psychos won't make strides of their own and possibly win some downticket races. Just that you're unlikely to see a phenomenon play out like this on the national stage again in the near future.

David Duke will probably try for another prez run in '20 and get squashed like a bug on a windshield.

Oh fuck Hogan/Eastwood '20 will be the death of us

Empty Chair/Eastwood would be a more compelling duo.

Empty Chair didnt take well to his insubordination last time

Nugent/Simmons '20

Empty Chair would top the ticket w/ Eastwood as veep.

limbaugh/ hannity 2020 is the dream team imo

First legislation the Affordable Imported Painkiller act

i think hannity is possibly my least favorite person in the world

most punchable face imo even over that trump minion cohen guy upthread

We should gather people together for a punch test so we can get a definitive answer.

y'all i loathe my man hannity as much as you but howwwwwww is he more punchable than ted cruz

Another vote for Hannity.

Cruz's face is harder to hit as he pre-emptively covers it in a layer of bacon grease for protection

cruz is bacon grease with a toupee'd blobfish hanging from it but he's less punchable than hannity or cohen. his politics are equally horrible but his tactics and persona are a tad more ingratiating.

trump-goldwater comparison is complicated. goldwater's failure (+ nixon's solution) had nothing to do with demographics -- it wasn't that explicitly or tacitly racist whites were an insufficient percentage of the electorate in 1964, but that goldwater was unable to separate them in sufficient numbers from the new deal / lbj landslide coalition, because of some combination of 1) white rage/fear not yet ripened by 1965-1968 and 2) he didn't go straight for it like nixon. despite his appeal to these people (and pace his raving-madman reputation) (and to the frustration of the excited kids around him) he did not run his campaign like an appeal to them; compared to nixon (let alone trump) he was dry and academic and his dog whistles were no fun to strain to hear. in many ways trump is more like nixon (but yknow, stupid) -- his appeal is completely emotional and targeted at the base's brainstem rather than the theoretical cerebellum in which it stores its Principled Conservatism. from this perspective the analogy to trump/cruz seems exactly backwards.

what we have now is a gop candidate even more openly dedicated than nixon to the politics of white grievance -- certainly much more dedicated than goldwater -- running in an america that just isn't white enough. (shakey's link above complicates this further of course -- this guy's such a bozo he's losing the whites too.) so it can't happen again the way it happened 1964-1968 -- the gop can't win in 2020 with a candidate who appeals to the same people and same emotions as trump but more directly and artfully and while seeming simultaneously more "statesmanlike" and more righteously embittered. (not sure anyone will ever pull off that last paradox w anything like the flair of r.m. nixon.)

what does worry me is the fascist demo, which someone ambitious will presumably work out how to make into a rainbow coalition. the infestation of the trump campaign with far-right authoritarian trolls like milo does remind me of the 1964 takeover and racial purge of the southern gop by local goldwater delegates who were not in denial at all about why they were for goldwater -- the beginnings of a capture, in the background of a whiffed campaign, of party apparatus by a really nasty and ambitious group of young right-wing activists. (this, not some 1967 brainwave of nixon's, is the birth of the realignment and thus the "southern strategy".) the main problem with this analogy is that if you actually read milo, or nu-breitbart, or even (to a lesser but still pretty fuckin hard not to notice extent) moldbug, what you find, still, is not tooled-up 21st-century multiracial authoritarianism but... white nationalism. someone like milo literally throws around phrases like "white identity" -- he's not planning for a glorious fascist future but harvesting clicks today.

idk what's gonna happen tho.

^^^ good post

NSFW: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/nude_donald_trump_statue_glued_to_the_ground_in_several_cities

The statues were commissioned in April. The INDECLINE pranksters said they wanted Trump’s effigy to appear to have a “constipated look.” Each statue was glued to the ground using industrial strength epoxy.

What I like best about this is that clearly these wonderful pieces of ostensibly “public” art were made, really, for just one person’s dubious pleasure: Donald Trump’s! That the rest of us might find them amusing seems like a bonus.

read that as "'pubic' art"

Hey, we found the (bare) bottom!

This tweetstorm today from a GOP strategist guy I regularly see RTd in movement conversativism NeverTrump circles is worth reading through, not because of any particular deep revelations, but in essence what these kind of folks are telling themselves about the point we're at and how the GOP came to it. Consider it an extension of the increasingly locked-down mythology -- who to blame, why they should be blamed, etc -- combined with the usual 'conservatism can't fail but only be failed' mindset. As such, illustrative, but much less surprising/bracing to those looking in on all this from the outside -- people have to have their origin myths:

https://twitter.com/MattMackowiak/status/766324793377378304

I like Natalie Reed's extensive response.

For reference:

https://twitter.com/nataliereed84/status/766340566871179264

I was specifically referring to this:

https://twitter.com/nataliereed84/status/766341654391455744

@ Ned - Yeah, that is interesting. The bad guys are Trump and opportunistic not-twue-conservatives who saw through the birther movement but exploited it anyway.

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/green-partys-jill-stein-tied-with-dead-gorilla-harambe-and-losing-to-deez-nuts-in-texas-poll/

Glad to see Deez Nuts still in play.

That Natalie Reed tweetstorm is righteous and right on.

Deez Nuts is a paper tiger imho, he presents himself an 'outsider' but he has ties to the Hollywood establishment going back to 1992 - your classic chronic media darling. The dead gorilla stands a real chance but typically, 538 (who are in the tank for Crooked Hillary) have been completely ignoring him along with the rest of the MSM.

Glad to see Deez Nuts still in play.

deez nuts and that donald trump statue make a good matched pair (pun intended)

And appropriately one somehow droops lower than the other.

What would Trump nickname Deez Nuts?

Wannabe SCROTUS