Carson would be easiest to impeach.
Maybe Trump would be the least likely to actually govern? So we'd have the country run by whatever rando advisers he picked? Who maybe wouldn't be so bad? Eh. I really don't know.
This makes me want to send Clinton a check.
I wonder how effective Cruz would be at governing. I assume he would continue alienating everyone except a small cadre, so maybe he wouldn't build a one-party state (one of my big worries)?
2: I thought that about Schwarzenegger, that he'd never want to govern. But he seemed to like it! Sort of, in that he never learned his own party's legislators' names.
I saw that, about Trump, Carson, Cruz. It was an awful few minutes of cycling through the options and starting at the beginning again.
Carson all day. Trump is already causing future terrorist attacks without being president; I think his election would increase the odds of global nuclear war substantially. Cruz seems highly effectual, and as conservative as Carson. Carson seems too zonked out on tranquilizers to accomplish much of anything, so it's mostly about who ends up puppeteering him.
The problem with Cruz is that he's by far the closest of the three toward having a coherent theory of what to do with power. That's a very low bar, but I'm afraid he's the likeliest of the three to succeed in doing a lot of damage. With Trump and Carson, there's some hope that they'd be ineffective enough to only make us miss Dick Cheney a little bit. Or they might decide the red button looks shiny and blow up the world.
So in summary, I dunno. Trump and Carson = unacceptably high risk of the sort of catastrophe we haven't seen in a very long time. Cruz = somewhat less risk of that, but more likely to wreck everything short of that.
So you'd marry Cruz, but who would you fuck and who would you kill?
That's really tough... Cruz strikes me as likely to be a really bad and poisonous boss who would seriously harm the executive branch. I'm almost tempted to say Carson, who has shown little interest in actual governing and might end up surrounded by better people who would actually run things. But then again he might do something really really crazy. Cruz is definitely the least risky, especially since he's actually pretty reasonable on foreign policy for a republican.
Meh. Gonna be Jeb or Rubio, which will blow up the Rethug Party, which means landslide and eight years of cheers every time Clinton kicks us
May I not live so long
who has shown little interest in actual governing and might end up surrounded by better people who would actually run things
Isn't that more or less what we got with W/Cheney? (for values of "better" meaning simply "cares more about advancing policies".)
11: Yes, but in this context, being no worse than Bush/Cheney is a good thing.
I like how all of the people who want a war in Ukraine complain that Trump is dangerous and extreme. All the people who supported McCain and Bush and now Rubio say that Trump is dangerous? Rubio is dangerous, Trump is just a businessman who wants to sell some hats.
All three are worse than any major candidate last time, right? (Unless Brownback counts as major, he's worse.)
I'm thinking Carson-for-WBush-reasons, although I guess people are also making the Trump argument for that and the secretly-he's-a-different-kind-of-loathsome-shit theory for Cruz.
As lost as Carson and Trump seem as far as foreign policy, that also seems like a good place for the whole state department apparatus to handle things (not well necessarily, but at all). And as far as domestic policy Cruz actually seems the creepiest of the three to me.
The whole premise is a setup by Davies to get us to admit that there's a circumstance where it would be appropriate to vote for Nader.
Anyone but Cruz. Call me crazy, but I don't trust anyone who is bitterly hated by everyone he has ever met. Also a negative is the fact that he is the most obvious and shameless fraud of any national politician of my lifetime.
Also a negative is the fact that he is the most obvious and shameless fraud of any national politician of my lifetime.
No, that's Trump.
Before reading any other comments: I pick Cruz. Trump would surround himself with toadies and be Dubya the second, only worse. Carson is a nut. Cruz is evil but grounded in reality. He would be awful but in predictable ways. If I had to pick a GOP candidate to support it would be Rubio. He's not utterly detached from reality, he wouldn't be a disaster for minorities, and he would probably not get us into any more stupid wars. Thinking about Republican candidates makes me long for GHWB. He was bad but oh man can we ever do worse.
Cruz is the only one who can mount a plausible challenge for the White House, so faced with an enforced choice between those three I'd choose Cruz and then choose a bullet in the head.
I mean, Trump's use of the KKK and supremacist America as a support base traps him in a cul de sac; he is Wallace 2.0 and unless he manages the (probably impossible) trick of etch-a-sketching all the extreme shit he's been running on, he'll end up as the same kind of footnote. Carson's appeal to the far precincts of the Dominionist right does the same to him (he comes off as spectacularly disconnected from reality because he hails from the Seventh Day Adventist Dimension in which he's a rockstar and historic success story and where everything you need to know about the world is covered in the church's doctrine). The GOP Primaries make for fine spectacle and this will be even truer if they result in a wingnut third-party run, but I can't see anyone really being put in a spot of having to choose either of these for President.
Cruz' views are really no less vicious than Trump's avowed ones, nor much less crazy than Carson's, so he'd essentially be like having the other two guys elected in one body, but he's a cannier politician than either of them and could possibly pass himself off warm-blooded for long enough to win. Hence the "bullet in the head" rider.
Skipped over this slatepitch, huh Young People May Vote for Rubio over Clinton ...Thanks, Obama!
Carson can't be taken seriously. Trump may push the shiny red button, but there are things worse than death, and the thousand year Reich of Ted Cruz is among them.
Cruz is the only one with a paid operator in every Iowa district. Which means he's smart, and means people will work for him.
I guess actually I should be choosing the guy *least* likely to win.
Carson all the way.
Carson's nuttiness dooms him even if his blackness didn't turn off a third of the GOP base. Trump could go all the way under the right circumstances (a big terrorist attack in October for example) but he's temperamentally unsuited to anything involving compromise and getting along. He'd be a disaster not just because of who he is but because the democrats are spineless weenies who would never do to him what the Republicans have done to Obama, namely resist on all fronts, cause problems and blame the president, and endorse crazy policies that the president can never implement.
21: Rubio seems to me to be the most perfect WBush clone imaginable for the Republicans, except to be honest with even less going on in his own head. He's very good at reciting prepared speeches and talking points, but as far as I can tell he has literally nothing else going for him (or going on in him, really).
Trump would probably just be a WBush on most issues, only with less predictable masters which probably wouldn't be much better but would certainly make it a lot harder for everyone to play the serious-statesmen-rock-ribbed-republican game.
Castock, the question is who you pick for president, not the Republican nominee.
I'm also skeptical of the idea that Cruz's views are less toxic than Trump's views. They're differently toxic, sure, and he's less obviously a Wallace-esque demagogue. But we're still talking about a man who argues for privatizing social security, cutting its benefits, and replacing the income tax with a 19% sales tax on all goods. There are nuclear weapons that would cause less devastation than the combination of those three policies being put into effect.
27: Oh. Then I vote for President "Bottle Full of Pills."
You could always just move to Canada.
I've heard from multiple sources who have dealt with the Rubio campaign that they and he don't really engage with what's going on: disorganized, unresponsive, etc. His views are the least toxic of the credible GOP candidates, though.
I find Cruz as scary as everyone else, Carson is already fading, and Trump is a mystery. Does he really believe what he is saying? Does he have a coherent (or even incoherent) philosophy? I think "no" on both counts. He's just winging it. If we was elected he'd wing it then too.
Still, I think Hillary is the most likely candidate to start WW3.
I'm legitimately worried Trump will go half-Hitler, with the open-carriers starring as modern-day brownshirts.
I have this recurring nightmare about Carson where we have some sort of financial crisis that makes 2008 look pleasant in comparison where Carson, addressing the nation, calmly reminds us that this is what happens when a nation turns away from God and proceeds to assure that he will veto any bill that comes his way until congress hands him constitutional amendments declaring marriage to be between a man and woman, banning abortion outright, and instituting a requirement that only Christians be allowed to hold government posts.
So probably Cruz. For all his anti-establishment talk, he really is just a garden-variety neocon in the Bush-Cheney tradition. I'll stick the with devil I know.
Also Cruz is probably the most beatable of the three in the general.
If it makes people feel any better about the Republican contingent, a moderate but not apocalyptic level nuclear exchange* would probably give us a lot breathing room when it comes to climate change, and we could desperately use that. I mean, in context. Where the context is horrible.
*Say, India/Pakistan? I don't know, really. There aren't good solutions here.
I'd pick Trump for sure. He's a quasi-fascist horrorshow, but has little ideology beyond his own ego and is likely to appoint media/real-estate/business type people into his administration, who these days are by far the best face of the Republican party. If there was an actual organized for real American fascist party behind him I'd feel differently, but there's not and he's more likely to ditch the rubes and govern as basically Jesse the Body with a bouffant than he is to preside over brown-shirt militias storming Dearborn Michigan.
Cruz is probably the worst substantively IMO, certainly on domestic politics. And he is by far the most dangerous. And he is just personally the worst human being ever, an nightmare combination of ideologue and ego so extreme that it feels like he was created in a lab to be an embodiment of evil. He is the candidate most likely to make me for real think about leaving the USA.
Carson is, simply, an insane person. Wildcard! Insane wildcard! I kind of like the Wildcard! possibilities. But Ogged is right, dude could totally nuke everyone and think he was doing the Lord's will.
Good game, though.
30: Ridley Scott made Canada up as a comforting fable for the end of Blade Runner. We're really just a big county of North Dakota.
Conveniently I'll be living abroad during the next election so I can stay away in case of disaster.
But Ogged is right, dude could totally nuke everyone and think he was doing the Lord's will.
He might be right. There's a precedent and "no floods" leaves a huge loophole.
I'd pick Trump for sure. He's a quasi-fascist horrorshow, but has little ideology beyond his own ego and is likely to appoint media/real-estate/business type people into his administration, who these days are by far the best face of the Republican party. If there was an actual organized for real American fascist party behind him I'd feel differently, but there's not and he's more likely to ditch the rubes and govern as basically Jesse the Body with a bouffant than he is to preside over brown-shirt militias storming Dearborn Michigan.
That's my default assumption, and yet:
Coppins described a disturbing scene, including one supporter yelling, "Light the motherfucker on fire!" about a protester:
One after another, protesters were forcibly dragged from the ballroom -- limbs flailing, torsos twisting in resistance -- while wild-eyed Trump supporters spewed abuse and calls to violence.
"Kick his ass!" yelled one.
"Shoot him!" shouted another.
Other attendees yelled, "Sieg heil!" and, "He's a Muslim!" as protesters were dragged away, according to NBC News's Benjy Sarlin. And Trump used media coverage of the protests as an excuse to insult the media.
15, as well as 28: as far as domestic policy Cruz actually seems the creepiest of the three to me.
Correct, so he's out: anyone who's willing to shut down the government or default on raising the debt ceiling is out. That leaves Trump.
Generally agreed with 37. Cruz is by far the most dangerous of the three.
I'm fairly sympathetic to RT's 37, but this ...
If there was an actual organized for real American fascist party behind him I'd feel differently
... suggests that he is more sanguine about the ongoing evolution of the Republican Party than I am.
Sure, Trump is staking out new territory in racism and xenophobia, but the whole "Make America Great Again" schtick is both 1.) a fascist dogwhistle and 2.) entirely mainstream in the Republican Party.
As we will find out when he gets the nomination.
I wouldn't actually call Trump a favorite for the nomination, but holy cow, the media's assessment of Trump's chances has been remarkably stupid, and the presumably smarter Nates (Silver and Cohn) have published some remarkably myopic analysis of the Trump phenomenon.
Here's Cohn's latest.
I love that Cohn still goes for "he has a low ceiling" in that article. I do notice that while people still say that they've stopped mentioning where exactly that ceiling sits, given how many times that argument has ended badly. He also puts a lot of effort into arguments about how Trump does worse on some polls than others, but always avoids saying what the numbers actually are ("smaller decisive majority" is a good answer for most of those cases).
I find this a fairly easy choice. What Trump says to get the attention of the rubes, and how the rubes act when safely outnumbering someone, doesn't tell us much about governance. And what we'd expect from him, seems to me, would be way less ideological than the others.
I think he's pervious to reason, and where there's a reasonable (and not humiliating) course available to him, he'll take it. Neither Carson nor Cruz can be counted on, in the least, to consider reality.
Trump's ego is such that he probably wouldn't want to be known as the worst president in history. He at least would understand, of the three, that you can't default on the debt. Carson would probably think he'll be rewarded in heaven for bringing about the rapture.
Disagree about Cruz. He had keen faculties of reasoning, clearly, which he abuses as a means to power. That's worrisome, too, of course.
Casron is delusional, Cruz is dastardly, and Trump is mostly just deceptive.
I love how, in the debate, everyone who spars with him makes sure to refer to Rubio as "Marco" (and nothing else), and over and over too. They sound like they all consulted the same strategist. (It's not a bad tactic though.)
I think the odds that Carson starts the Rapture and is rewarded for doing so are better than the odds of Trump, should he be elected, not being the worst president in history.
I was definitely 37.1 until recently. Trump's willingness to not only go along with--which is bad enough--but to actually exploit shit like 41 tells me that he doesn't need to be a fascist himself to enable/unleash levels of grassroots, as it were, fascism unseen in decades, if ever*, in the US. And yeah, the open carry movement scares the shit out of me.
I think I lean towards Carson as the one most likely to do the least damage. It's impossible for Cruz not to do incredible damage**, and I don't see Trump as being able to rein in Trumpismo even if he wanted to, which leaves Carson as maybe a guy who'd be surrounded by the sort of grifters who are too busy raiding the silver to actually torch the house. Cruz lights the curtains before the inauguration is over, and Trump's fans do the same as soon as reality intrudes on the Donald's administration.
*the Jim Crow South had a lot of fascistic aspects, and white supremacy had reach everywhere, but the focus was essentially singular. Trump fans are aligned against, Hispanics, Muslims, liberals, and anyone who tells them they're wrong.
**it's impossible to imagine Cruz being elected without a substantial House majority and filibuster-proof Senate control. Probably true for all three, but certainly for Cruz.
Wow Carly Fiorina just announced plans to start WWIII.
Yeah that was.. special?
Trump's most recent exchange with Bush was really, really satisfying. I know Trump is scary as a candidate as well but after 2000-2008 I've got to say I feel a bit of approval for anyone who's willing to do something like that to a member of the Bush family. I bet HW Bush felt that one.
Man, Rubio is getting hurt here. He does not make good faces when he's under pressure.
I agree with Mr. Carp in 45, except that, Charley, I think you may be underestimating Cruz's rationality. I mean, yes, he adheres to a crazy vision of the world, but he is utterly sane and rational in pursuit of his irrational ideology.
Yeah, I'd definitely put him in last place on that account. Which is why I really think he might win.
My twitter feed is really laugh out loud funny.
I'm not watching this -- is Rubio helping himself at all?
It's always hard to predict but... I'm guessing not much. We finally got to see what happens when someone pushes hard on him and he has trouble with it. The immigration back and forth with Cruz was not good for him.
The next president appoints probably four Supreme Court justices and shapes US law for a generation or two. The last person on Earth I want making those appointments is Ted Cruz. Ben Carson is demonstrably insane. Trump wins by default.
but to actually exploit shit like 41 tells me that he doesn't need to be a fascist himself to enable/unleash levels of grassroots, as it were, fascism unseen in decades, if ever*, in the US.
Would go as far as "ever," since I don't really see how it's all that different from the Wallace movement in '68. Yes Wallace's appeal crystallized around segregation but the focus of white supremacy was never "singular," it was arrayed against just as much of a collection of bogeymen then as it is now (the names on the chairs have changed is all). The tactics and neo-Nazi imagery aren't even all that different from the days when Martin Luther King was confronted by people waving swastikas in the streets of Chicago.
Apostropher gets it right, I think.
It's a difficult question how much President Trump would resemble Candidate Trump. I suspect the way Trump has caved after asking for $$$ for his debate appearances is telling. His bark is worse than his bite, and his chief flaws would be inflammatory rhetoric and incompetence, not follow-through.
God only knows who he'd appoint to the supreme court, though.
36: it really wouldn't. Except in as much as it might trigger a global recession. But (sorry bob) mass slaughter of civilians in itself does little or nothing for the atmospheric carbon budget. What, 20 or 30 megadeaths from a full scale indo-pak strategic exchange that puts a 500 kt airburst over the top fifteen cities on each side? That's nothing as a proportion of population. we'd make that back in three months.
I had just decided to register as a Republican to vote against Trump in the primaries when I realized that by then the alternative might be Cruz, so I've already been thinking about this question. Carson's moment is obviously over, so I haven't given him any thought.
I'm surprised by the argument that Cruz is a garden-variety neocon. In terms of people actually in Congress, he's the worst of the worst. He tried to drive the US into defaulting on its debt. Unlike most politicians, he's succeeded by being inflexible, and never backing down. If he gets elected President that way, he'll be completely out of control. He's the person who comes closest to being like Martin Sheen's President in the Dead Zone movie shouting "It is my destiny" while destroying the world.
Trump's policies will be some random mishmash of whatever insects are buzzing around inside his brain, so they're unlikely to be as bad as Cruz. The dangers with Trump are how much violence in the streets he will cause with his irresponsible campaign, and how badly he will fail at diplomacy.
Trump's policies will be some random mishmash of whatever insects are buzzing around inside his brain, so they're unlikely to be as bad as Cruz. The dangers with Trump are how much violence in the streets he will cause with his irresponsible campaign, and how badly he will fail at diplomacy.
But the point about a US president (an outside observer writes) is that he can apparently do virtually nothing he wants to within the US but virtually anything he wants to outside it. So surely that's the lens you should be using. Carson, of the three, is the least likely to have an insanely aggressive or accidentally catastrophic foreign policy, so surely he's the right choice?
There's also the Supreme Court.
Cruz is a leader of the most right-wing faction in Congress. If he wins, I don't see how that faction doesn't become ascendant.
Now that Carson is fading, I refuse to learn anything else about him, such as what his foreign policy plans would be. I've suffered enough this election cycle.
30: I have a job here, and there are not many jobs in Tim's field.
59: Oh, I didn't mean that this is the first time there's been groups of Americans who hated everyone else; I just meant that they've rarely, if ever, been sanctioned by the President. That is, if Wallace had won, things would have been probably worse than under a hypothetical Trump (because the country as a whole was more reactionary, and it's possible to imagine Wallace forces driving us back to something like Jim Crow), but he didn't win, and the ugly forces remained relatively restrained.
Put it this way: I think what's happening right now, with dozens of anti-Muslim incidents since San Bernardino, the open carry loons, Fort Collins, etc., is roughly comparable to what we had IRL under Nixon. Had Wallace won, things would have been worse, and so I say that, under Trump, things would get considerably worse than they are now.
I do think that, nationwide, there were fewer people in 1968 who believed liberal==traitor. Hippie, yes, but at this point 75% of the GOP primary electorate literally thinks that center-left Obama is a traitor, and everyone who voted for him, too. That's something we haven't seen in a long time. Birch was a fringe movement, McCarthy's peak was brief, but it's been 35 years since Republicans believed that a Democrat could legitimately be President.
The adviser dodge is a bust, though. They said that about W - remember "the adults" who were meant to be back? And he appointed crazy ideologues (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz), ruthless partisan thugs (Rove, Libby, Miers), extra-terrestrials (Cheney, Addington), scam artists (Dusty Foggo, Heckuva Brown), and mediocrities (Powell). He was exhibit A for the rule that As hire As and Bs hire Cs. About the only appointee who was any good was Gates and that was very, very late in the day. Paul O'Neill was about the only one of them to fit the adult supervision description, and tellingly, they alienated him into quitting very early on.
David Cameron is another example - everyone knew he was soufflé-light, but of course you can hire talent! And of course he turned out to pick a stream of dullards, grifters, crackpots, and outright criminals.
Buchanan the week after 9/11 basically is just like trump:
http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-us-pays-the-high-price-of-empire-383
What took place last Tuesday was an atrocity. What is coming may qualify as tragedy. For the mass murder of our citizens has filled this country with a terrible resolve that could lead it to plunge headlong into an all-out war against despised Arab and Islamic regimes that turns into a war of civilizations, with the United States almost alone.
Our enemy, we are told, is Osama bin Laden. But though he may be the instigator and financier of terror, the war crimes of Tuesday last were carried out by men who live among us. The enemy is already inside the gates. How many others among our 11 million "undocumented" immigrants are ready to carry out truck bombings, assassinations, sabotage, skyjackings?
The next president appoints probably four Supreme Court justices and shapes US law for a generation or two.
But they have to be confirmed by Congress, though. Can't they be blocked?
D.B. Cooper was probably undocumented.
You might want to blockquote that or people will think you're crazy.
70: Republicans control the Senate and have a decent shot at holding it in 2016. Democrats could filibuster, I suppose, but I suspect it wouldn't take long for the Senate leadership to kill the filibuster under that scenario.
62: I'm afraid estimates of damage in that scenario have been revised up substantially: http://www.wired.com/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/
Republicans control the Senate and have a decent shot at holding it in 2016.
More important, under any circumstance where one of these 3 guys win, they hold the Senate every time. It's too far out to say for sure, but most likely the Senate flips whichever way the White House goes. This is the class of '10, which includes lots of loons and assholes, but nobody splits tickets anymore, so the national presidential vote will tend to be reflected in the Senate votes.
And yeah, the GOP will absolutely kill the filibuster for the SC if they can cram it with more Alitos. They might not do it if it were just one seat (especially if it's replacing Scalia, where there's no net gain), but if the first death/retirement comes in year one, the filibuster for SC dies.
64, 70 -- this misses the dynamic that can occur when the leader of the most extreme faction of Congress is also President and also gets to pick the Supreme Court and also already has an ideology sympathetic to a bunch of crazies in the judiciary. That's pretty much the cheat code for destroying America. It's also pretty much where Ted Cruz would be, at least (most likely) in his first Congress. Trump's lack of Congressional ties and judicial support would limit his power decisively. So he'd likely be a weak, if incredibly terrible, President. Cruz would not be.
I should say "extreme faction of the majority."
Cruz scares me a lot more than Trump. Essentially for the reasons made by Tigre and Carp. Smart, cunning, idealogical. I don't see Trump as being nearly as effective or strategic.
The biggest thing about Cruz is that, while everyone hates him and he's terrible at the work of legislation, I don't think there's anyone in Congress with the balls/political power to stand up to him if he wins. If Cruz wins and the Speaker and Majority Leader don't bend to his will, there will be an absolute rebellion by the Reps/Senators, because they'll see this as their time.
Right. If nuclear war is dangerous and bacon causes cancer, what is there left to enjoy?
62: When you've got a scale where a lot of the possibilities are on the other side of the "human extinction" line I think "moderate" looks a lot worse than that. If it's just "a couple cities get smashed" then that seems like a pretty mild nuclear exchange to me.* A good solid ground war using only conventional weapons/tactics could cause the level of casualties you're talking about. (But anyway it's the somewhat longer term after effects that are the big deal, e.g., flattening massive chunks of India would have some serious consequences for other parts of the world and not the sort of that involve an improved economic situation or an increased population.)
*Although it's worth noting that while you wouldn't see everyone in a city die from a nuclear weapon, the populations of Mumbai+Kolkata amount to around 30 Million people all on their own. Cities are fucking big.
74: well, at least it'd bring temperatures down a bit. Which is a plus from the MHPH/bob point of view. (NB I am sure MHPH does not actually want a nuclear war just for this reason.)
83: I know you're intentionally being kind of a dick here, but what's striking about 74 is how you manage to get many of the worst effects of climate change even as you forestall (reverse? it wasn't clear to me how long-lasting the reduced temps would be) the actual event. Mass die-off in the oceans, near-universal famine, complete upending of ecosystems, etc.
That is, if the effects of a limited nuclear exchange were different*, you could make a (monstrous) utilitarian case that it's preferable, but in the event, the only upside would be to slow sea rise.
*nuclear winter, carbon-reducing recession, brief population reversal (albeit not among the primary culprits of carbon creation)
84: just to emphasise I don't actually want a nuclear war either. Not even a teeny tiny little one.
And actually nuclear-induced climate change would be worse than the same amount of the normal kind because it would happen much faster and we wouldn't have time to adapt to it (plus our ability to adapt would be crippled by our just having had a nuclear war).
I too am not in favor of a nuclear war.
Let's not be categorical here. I am MOSTLY not in favor of nuclear war, UNLESS it leads to me ruling the remnant of humanity in an undersea fortress.
I mean, it has to be a luxury undersea fortress.
I have a narrow set of circumstances in which I favor nuclear war, but 87 isn't part of that set.
Moby is right: it's an underground base in a mountain on a tropical island or nothing.
So given the debate last night, who do we think are pro-nuclear war? Trump obviously, Cruz, Christie...Fiorina? Anyone taking a stand against it? Kasich and Paul?
My quibble is more with who is the dictator of the fortress, not the location.
I am in favor of a nuclear war if it destroys Tigre's undersea fortress.
Carson, of the three, is the least likely to have an insanely aggressive or accidentally catastrophic foreign policy, so surely he's the right choice?
This seems exactly wrong to me. For starters, Carson is clearly incompetent on matters of public policy, and could blunder into anything.
Also: Trump is a businessman; Cruz a politician. Both recognize that there's a certain level of damage they can do that will actually have an impact on their lives.
Carson, however, is looking forward to the apocalypse. He's not going to be unduly concerned about taking steps to prevent God's will.
But they have to be confirmed by Congress, though. Can't they be blocked?
In addition to what others have said, nominally more Democratic Senates gave us folks like Scalia and Thomas. John Roberts sailed through. Republican presidents are given a lot of deference on this stuff.
Carson, however, is looking forward to the apocalypse.
It would solve lots of problems.
With Trump at least the trains will run on time
86: In the American version of fascism there are no passenger trains.
The highways will be repaved on time.
On my 74, this is an important subtheme of Naomi Oreskes' MERCHANTS OF DOUBT - a lot of the science (basically, decent global circulation models and CFD) is shared between the realisation climate change would be a thing and the realisation nuclear winter would be a thing. It's no accident the same people love nukes and despise climate scientists.
Carson, however, is looking forward to the apocalypse. He's not going to be unduly concerned about taking steps to prevent God's will.
I didn't know that - I mean, I knew he was religious, I didn't know he was Rapture Ready...
The November 2013 change to the filibuster rule sets a fine precedent for simply changing the rule if it gets in the way of a Cruz SC nomination.
I'm going to support Christie solely on the basis of his having used "feckless" in last night's debate. (Specifically, he called Obama a "feckless weakling.") It's an excellent word that's sorely underused.
The highways won't be repaved on time, because all of the concrete will be used for the border wall.
Nah, we'll make the wall out of glass since there will be a surplus after we nuke the entire middle east.
105: No, we can't have all those Mexicans looking in at us.
67
it's been 35 years since Republicans believed that a Democrat could legitimately be President.
I'm sure this is correct in some sense, but at this point you have to examine exactly what you mean by "believe." I mean, forgive the analogy, but we all know how ~10-20 percent of the population say they believe that abortion is murder, and yet most of them don't literally act that way and follow through. Likewise, people may say that they think Obama isn't a real American, but they consistently act inconsistent with that. If they actually believed that in a meaningful sense, things would be even worse.
Yay! Things could still get worse!
Those who live in glass houses shouldn't poop.
110: And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say 'This is the worst
Those who live in glass houses should only throw poop if they haven't been pooping rocks.
111: Fallingwater has toilets that face curtainless, floor-to-ceiling windows. In other words, architects either like to watch people poop or want other people to watch them poop.
It also has a river running through the living room. So, really, why would you need toilets at all?
Not in the living room. The river is down a flight of stairs. Not everyone can manage those.
I didn't know he was Rapture Ready...
Is this an explicit part of his theology (I haven't followed him very closely) or just a supposition (this is what I was doing) that someone delusional and religious would have fewer qualms about sending us to the afterlife?
I don't think it is physically possible for a man to piss from the top of the stairs and hit the creek. I think you'd just mess up the stairs. I'm sure you couldn't poop or girl-pee directly into the water.
Carson does not believe in Hell or in the Rapture, but he does believe in the Apocalypse.
117: Carson is presumably ready to be glorified:
When He returns, the righteous dead will be resurrected, and together with the righteous living will be glorified and taken to heaven, but the unrighteous will die. The almost complete fulfillment of most lines of prophecy, together with the present condition of the world, indicates that Christ's coming is near.
One can't dispute the potentially catastrophic downside of Trump, but I can't think of a Republican candidate who is clearly better.
Is the unfogged consensus that Jeb "Terri Schiavo" Bush would unambiguously make a better president?
My question for Walt:
I had just decided to register as a Republican to vote against Trump ...
Who would you vote for?
121: Not that I would vote for him over a Democrat, but the only one who sounds remotely sane when the subject turns to foreign policy is Rand Paul. And honestly, he's way better than many Democrats (including Clinton) on that front.
I'd take any of Bush, Rubio, Christie, Paul, and Fiorina out of any of the three in this post.
I'm holding out for Lindsey Graham.
But if you're registering as a Republican to sabotage Trump, you don't get any choice. You have to vote for the 2nd place person or you're not sabotaging.
I agree with 123, but isn't it great for the entire world that we're at the point when those seem like better semi-realistic choices for the most powerful job in the world.
I think that depends on your state's rules about delegates and how the various candidates stand in your state.
But you're increasing the number of voters, not switching a committed voter. How can it have any effect unless the person you vote for actually displaces Trump?
They should measure ship size in terms of Trumps displaced.
128: Well, sure, by that standard roughly no one's vote ever matters.
Relatively few of the states are winner-take-all at this point. (I think it's a minority.) Increasing the numbers for, I dunno, Pataki could mean he gets a delegate and, as a result, Trump gets a smaller number of them from that state.
No, you're "sending a message" and so on, even if you're not the tie-breaker. But if you're expressly registering as a Republican to unseat Trump, you've got a narrower range of goals.
Carry on with your crazy primaries!
My point is that what matters is delegates, not the vote. That is to increase the odds that Trump isn't the nominee, you need to decrease the odds that he gets a delegate in a race with many candidates. As long as you aren't throwing your vote to somebody who will never get enough votes to get a delegate, you'll weaken Trump.
(Note: I think switching parties to weaken Trump is a bad idea if you are worried about the overall impact on the politics of the US.)
A propos to this conversation: "Kamau Bell tells white people to "come get your boy" "
This idea fascinates me on a lot of levels. First of all, you've hit on something very true: white people in this country never feel any need or any pressure to denounce/regulate/distance themselves from other white people when those white people act out of pocket. Black people, and every other racial/ethnic/religious/sexual minority, understand "come and get your boy" all too well. Being forced to account for someone else's words or actions is particularly old hat for black people - as is being made to speak on behalf of All The Black People, as translators or apologists, whether they want to or not. Similarly, everybody but white people has become well acquainted with the feeling of oh fuck, please don't let him be . . . while waiting to find out the identity of a criminal, an alleged criminal - hell, at this point, even a victim.
All this is because whiteness is invisible. To white people, anyway. The idea of checking Donald Trump just because he's white makes as much sense to us as the idea of chastising an elephant for taking a dump just because we're both carbon-based life forms.
...
But this is where your idea about Trump comes in, and why it's brilliant. Even white people like the ones at that White Privilege Conference we got drunk and spoke at a couple of weeks ago - white people who are furious about racism and police brutality and black death - don't really know what to do on a personal level. And it's all well and good for us to tell them (after, what was it, four rounds of gin and tonics?) to go confront their racist families, but it doesn't feel like enough. But denouncing Trump from a position of whiteness, declaring that he disgusts you as a white person and does not speak for you as a white person does something different, something kind of cool. It's a way to claim and use whiteness, to wield it with authority rather than apology, and that's something white anti-racists seldom get the chance to do. We need a meme, though. Or a hashtag. You any good at hashtags?
131: Plus, you could single-handedly double his support!
That's why I added the caveat about candidates who won't even get a single delegate.
131: Here's the official breakdown. It's complicated.
136: Basically, white people need a gentile-inclusive version of "A shande far di goyim"?
123: I'd take any of Bush, Rubio, Christie, Paul, and Fiorina out of any of the three in this post.
You'll have to shorten the list of preferables. Rubio, neo-con. Fiorina, wants to drown the government in a bathtub.
So Bush, Christie, Paul. OK. I'd throw in Kasich.
If Lindsay Graham weren't such a frightened and freakish hawk, I'd throw him in as well: he's at least relatively mild, as Republicans go, on multicultural inclusivity, tolerance of the LGBTQ community, and such.
142: Sometimes I think "a white person" is close enough to that to count.
I just want to say that I think it's impressive that this thread has managed not to veer off into which of the 3 would be best faced in the general.
Also, apparently Carson was a mess last night, and whatever support remained seems likely to relocate. Cui bono?
143: Christie was the one crowing that he would shoot down Russian jets. He's a loon.
Carson's support goes to Cruz, apparently. Strategies for countering Cruz are in order.
147: Oh, yes, I'd forgotten. Okay, so Bush and Paul, and Kasich (trying to ignore his call for establishing a Dept. of Judeo-Christian Values, or whatever that was).
Really, it's sad that the Republicans are down to this.
For what it's worth, their increasingly byzantine system of delegate proportionment is ... I don't know, is that better or worse for the state, or fate, of the nation?
After reading this thread, I'm starting to think none of them would make a good president!
148: Countering Cruz in the general or in the primary?
In the primary it depends on who is trying to get his supporters. A lot of them seem likely to jump ship to Trump if Cruz falls apart, since most of the remaining candidates are establishment sorts. I think Christie might have a chance of snapping some up, though, if he can stay in the spotlight long enough that people remember he's running. He'd be wise to start imitating Trump and doing some aggressive bullying of someone right about now to keep him in the news and come off the right way to primary voters. (Having Christie take down Rubio might actually be a better plan for the establishment right now than any other one they've got handy.) Rubio needs to actually run for office at all - have rallies, have staff doing ground work, etc. Having his totally-not-connected-really campaign PAC buying ad time isn't going to do it. He'd probably do well to try to tie Cruz to Trump as much as possible, and see if he can't steal away some of the Christian and Moderate voters who aren't comfortable with Trump but support Cruz.
In the general election, god, I have no idea. Cruz's policies are repulsive but I'd be worried that they fall into the category of 'so repulsive no one believes you when you describe them'. I'd guess the best strategy would be to use him as a wedge in the establishment and try to use their reluctance to support him against him. Otherwise, if it's Hillary, a good strong campaign of (gentle-ish) mocking seems like the sort of thing that would really get under his skin and cause him to lash out in a way that would make him look bad and much open him up. I suspect that he reacts badly/unwisely to being attacked if he doesn't have time to strategize about it ahead of time.
Countering him in the general election, I think. Martin Longman (aka booman) at Washington Monthly recently had a piece on how moderate Republicans are ripe for the picking, dating from Republican focus groups done in October 2013:
Perhaps most interesting, though, was their attitude toward Hillary Clinton. At least among the moderate Republican women in one focus group, they preferred her to a generic Republican male candidate:
In the group of moderate women in Raleigh, participants were very supportive, surprisingly so, of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Weighing the option of voting for Hillary Clinton versus a Republican male, the moderate Republican women in Raleigh chose Clinton, on balance. One woman said, "I don't consider myself a Democrat but... if she was the nominee...I would seriously consider...voting for her more than a Democratic male candidate."
So: point out that Cruz is against any rape and incest exception for abortion. That he's proposing a 19% sales tax. There's plenty of material there to move registered Independents and moderate Republicans to the Dem column in the general by painting Cruz as an extremist. Shutting down the government, for god's sake, is a rather maniacal move, it is not?
Point out that carpet bombing is a war crime.
The abortion stuff would probably work against him because he couldn't dance away from it easily, and people are primed to believe that kind of thing as well.
The 19% sales tax though looks to me like the sort of thing that falls directly into the "oh you're just attacking him dishonestly no politician would actually propose something so horrific" trap. (It's annoying to quote this since it's not that necessary but the article itself is so painfully long that it's only fair.)
Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan -- and thus championed "ending Medicare as we know it" -- while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.
"He wants to privatize social security, cut its benefits and impose a 19% sales tax on all goods" sounds exactly like the sort of thing that almost any low-information voter (and plenty of higher information ones who like to feel worldly and/or optimistic) would react to with "that's a stupid caricature".
153: And why wouldn't they? Hillary Clinton is what would be a moderate Republican if any such beast still existed. She is barely distinguishable from Joe Lieberman on a policy level. Instead, any GOP politician that stops short of advocating Middle Eastern genocide now automatically gets "moderate" status.
121: They're all awful, but I was assuming that number 2 would be somebody like Rubio, Bush, or Christie.
146
I thought you were going to write it was impressive that this thread had not devolved into a giant game of "fuck, marry kill"
Ok. Marry Carson, because he seems like the easiest to get along with. Kill Cruz, because he is an awful and irritating human being. That leaves fuck Trump by process of elimination. I suppose if you roofied yourself and then woke up when it was over you could get through it
"He wants to privatize social security, cut its benefits and impose a 19% sales tax on all goods" sounds exactly like the sort of thing that almost any low-information voter (and plenty of higher information ones who like to feel worldly and/or optimistic) would react to with "that's a stupid caricature".
It depends on what they are already primed to believe about the politician. Voters were primed to believe Romney was moderate because of his record in Massachusetts, being a Mormon, flip-flop on abortion, and widespread distrust of him from the right-wing side of his party. But if Cruz comes out of the primary with the "fascist" label firmly stuck upon him, low-info voters will more likely to believe when it gets pointed out that the guy eats puppies.
Democrats get most of the votes from Asia, where everybody eats puppies, but you only criticize the white, Christian puppy eater.
But denouncing Trump from a position of whiteness, declaring that he disgusts you as a white person and does not speak for you as a white person does something different, something kind of cool. It's a way to claim and use whiteness, to wield it with authority rather than apology, and that's something white anti-racists seldom get the chance to do. We need a meme, though. Or a hashtag. You any good at hashtags?
"Secure your oxygen mask first before helping others". If I tried this I'd wake vomiting.
Now that I think about it, I recall Obama took some heat for eating puppies.
Well, it's not traditional for Thanksgiving.
And maybe he shouldn't have killed the puppies on camera right after pardoning the Turkey.
Kasich seems to be the least offensive. It goes without saying that that's a low bar.