14 candidates step in, one steps out. Hey that could be an interesting TV show. But since we don’t do this by cage match who has a chance at winning the Republican nomination?
Alright, I’m going to cut out anyone who polled lower than one percent on any of the polls in the last week. I’m basing that on the polls available here which is:
- RCP Average
- FOX News
- Quinnipiac
- NBC/WSJ
- IBD/TIPP
- CBS/NY Times
So with that we have:
- Carson
- Trump
- Rubio
- Cruz
- Bush
- Fiorina
- Kasich
- Paul
- Huckabee
- Christie
Sorry Santorum, Jindal, Graham, and Pataki you’re out, but you’ll have company soon.
Christie and Huckabee will be out both for their low polling but also because they’re both unelectable. Huckabee lacks the appeal to the far right base as they’ve moved beyond him and his 1980s/1990s social conservativeism into new territory, and he has never appealed to the centre right. While Christie will get mired down in accusations of corruption that he won’t be able to shake in a general election.
Though Rand Paul polls OK (top 8) he rubs most of the party core the wrong way both as a libertarian and as a non-interventionist (which is too bad because he would’t be the worst president from this field).
Kasich I’m going to leave in just because he might be a sleeper candidate and be able to pick up the pieces at the end of this fight.
Fiorina has never won an election, and I don’t think she can. Her experience with HP has a major shadow over it, and her penchant for saying things that are verafiably false won’t help come election day. I’m going to call her out, though I may be surprised. If she does win the nomination (not an impossibility) she can’t win against either of the potential Democratic candidates.
Bush should have been mopping the floor with these candidates. There’s a chance that he’s just absorbing punches but I think he may be out while standing at this point. I don’t think he understands the anger in his party against the establishment, and if there’s one candidate in the race who’s establishment it’s Bush.
Alright we’ve whittled it down to a top five.
Now we start looking at electability.
Trump, while strong in the polls is also polling as the least likely to get elected against the likely Democratic candidates and that actually means something to Republicans. They want a Republican in office and they’ll take someone they don’t particularly like if he’ll win, but Trump wont so that’s a major mark against him. The other issue is that he’s popular because after several months no one knows how to handle him. He’s an internet troll in real life and because the media loves him we can’t just go back to our normal “don’t feed the trolls”. The best way to beat him then is with information. Run that clip of him saying “my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars” over and over again until it’s the only thing voters associate with him. Go back to his record and bring out every case where he’s acted like a Democrat, lefty, or any remarks that show how opposed he actually is to what he’s claiming to do. He’s had decades in the spotlight, it shouldn’t be hard. Then you don’t ever bring those things up to him directly. Instead you run them on tv and radio ads, put them in news papers, and get meme makers to go crazy with them all over the internet. You ignore the person and instead make everyone associate him with what the core of the party hates: left leaning rich people who don’t care about everyday Americans. Is it true? I don’t know. But it would probably work.
Carson is an interesting candidate because he’s so popular because he’s fairly unknown. But the more we learn about him the less people will want to vote for him. He’s a Santorum. By the time we get to February he’ll be looking more and more like a lost cause.
Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich I think are the three most likely candidates and the most electable. Rubio is a strong fiscal conservative who pays lipservice to the social conservative wing of the party. Cruz is a strong social conservative who buts heads constantly with the “establishment” in the Republican party. And Kasich forms the perfect match between establishment, fiscal conservative and social conservative, and for some reason everyone seems to be ignoring him (which may be a good thing).
So that’s my prediction. Rubio, Cruz, or Kasich will likely be the candidate. If he isn’t the candidate then either Kasich or Rubio will be the VP nominee.
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