A Great Republican Hope?

The problem is that none of them are all that great.

I’ve put this off as long as I can. I’d hoped to hold out until after the conventions, but events demand that I break my silence sooner than that. It’s a Presidential election year, and it’s time for me to get all political again. So here I go.

(Just to let everyone know where I’m coming from, I’ve been a Democrat for decades but these days I am unlikely to identify with either party. Politically, I am a die-hard Progressive.)

So as long as I’m jumping into the pool, I might as well throw myself into the deep end and start right in with Republican politics. Because the Republicans, as you may have noticed, are in a bit of trouble. Several different kinds of trouble, actually, and said troubles bear the names of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Paul Ryan.

And somewhere in the vast Republican cemetery, grave robbers are even now digging up the political corpse of Mitt Romney, hoping to play Frankenstein and resurrect his long-dead career.

Trump Card, or Joker?

The biggest, most glaringly obvious problem that the Republicans face is Donald Trump, the New York financial wannabe-wizard (his financial dealings haven’t really been all that successful, but he’s something of a genius at self-promotion) who has decided that he really wants to be President. At least, it appears that he wants to be President; before his run at the White House, it’s never been entirely obvious what Trump was really after, not in politics and certainly not in business.

Early in Trump’s run for the Presidency it was widely predicted that he wouldn’t last, that he never intended to stay the course, that he never had a real chance at the nomination. Not just political nothings like me; I’m talkin’ real people with political insider credentials, people with their own shows on CNN and Fox and MSNBC (more traditional networks seldom bother with news anymore...for that matter, CNN/Fox/MSNBC are more  concerned with commentary than news).

Trump has a history of almost running for President, and at first everyone thought that this time it would be the same. I remember hearing pundits saying that Trump would “definitely” drop out well before he got to the convention. He didn’t. In fact, he’s the runaway success of the party, the current frontrunner by a wide margin. That has become something of an embarrassment to the Republican establishment. He has been racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant, so much so that his current politics could be mistaken for the Know Nothings of the 1850s.

This makes him dangerous to the Republican Party, which as long ago as 2012 acknowledged that they would need minorities and women if they were ever going to win theWhite House again. His popularity among Latinos is incredibly poor (following his racist and inaccurate statements about Mexicans) as is his support among women, though it should be said that he stands better among Republican women though even those numbers are falling. His support among African Americans is also astonishingly low.

And while it has to be admitted that the party hasn’t done nearly enough to court these groups, Trump has been actively driving them away.

When questioned about these deficiencies, his standard response is to proclaim “Oh, they’ll love me!” (or some variation of that theme). In the political realities of the electorate today, it’s hard to see how the Republicans can hope to win the Presidency without the support of, or at least the lack of opposition from, minorities and women.

Trump is consistently, and handily, beaten in the polls by both likely Democratic contenders, Clinton and Sanders. To say that this has the Republican party nervous is a serious understatement. With Trump’s astonishing popularity and his commanding lead among Republicans, the GOP is desperate to find a way of denying him the nomination and is casting about for another candidate to support; if you will, a new Great White Hope.

The Ted Cruz Blues

Currently, the GOP is pinning all of its Stop Trump hopes on Ted Cruz. I find it fascinating that the Republican party, so many of whom went collectively delusional and declared Obama to be ineligible to be President because of his African father, is now happy to accept Canadian-born and Cuban-fathered Cruz. But that’s their business.

Ultra-Conservative Ted Cruz is not the best liked man in the GOP. In fact, it would be accurate to say that he’s one of the least liked Republican leaders, and that’s by his own party. Nevertheless, with the more reactionary elements of the party stirred up by Trump it is taking an ultra-Conservative to cut into his lead, and to defeat Trump the party is willing to ignore Cruz’ unpopularity.

Cruz has been actively—and not entirely honestly, though not much less so than others in this race—campaigning for the Presidency, and it would be fair to say that he has the nomination within his sights if not his grasp. He’s currently running behind Trump in the delegate count, but he’s well ahead of anyone else.  Moreover, by being the most likely Trumpslayer actually running he’s the party’s fair-haired boy.

Ryan’s Hope?

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan isn’t even running for President. Well, not officially, but he’s certainly acting a lot like a Presidential candidate lately.

Before Ryan was Speaker he said flat-out that he didn’t want to be Speaker. Then they asked him to be Speaker, and he took the job with (IMHO) a faux-reluctance that was nauseating to behold. I always thought (and still think) that the job was what he wanted all along, and his obvious and public denial of the fact was his way of gaining the position after clearing out the competition, and without actually having to stand against anyone else in the party.

I think Ryan is playing that same game with the Presidency that he played with the Speakership. I think that if someone at the convention taps him for the nomination he’ll sigh, “Well, if I must...for the party...” while at the same moment he’s rapturously creaming his jeans.

This tactic allows him to appear to be a more reasonable, moderate candidate in the general election without having to live down a truckload of hard Right rhetoric spewed during the primaries, which if you’ll remember is one of the things that torpedoed Mitt Romney in 2012 (but more about Mitt later).

The problem with Ryan, from the Republican standpoint, is that he isn’t polling well against either Clinton or Sanders; around fifteen or sixteen points behind either of them, according to the last polls I read.

There’s a problem with the Republican Party as a whole that’s related to Ryan: with all of them so focused on sidelining Trump, not enough attention is being paid to the general election.

Like I said, I think Ryan is being deliberately disingenuous about the nomination, just waiting for the right moment to jump up and save the nation. Focusing on Ryan still won’t get them where they need to be; as Great White Hopes go, Paul Ryan isn’t all that great.

But maybe I’m wrong about Ryan. Maybe he really is the reluctant politician he pretends to be. And maybe my pickup will sprout wings and turn into a DC3.

Romney...The Mild Card

Former 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney is another name that’s been put forward as a potential candidate, but given his dismal showing against Barack Obama back then I’m really not sure why.

It’s not that he didn’t do well in the election, though he really didn’t do well in the election; it’s that he didn’t campaign at all well. He kept getting caught in obvious falsehoods and misstatements and was never able to rise above the perception that he was a candidate for the 1%. He had to move so far to the Right to secure the nomination that when he tried to backtrack on those previously-stated Right-wing positions in order to broaden his appeal for the national electorate, no one bought it. It gave Mitt a credibility problem that he never overcame.

Frankly, if Romney were the 2016 nominee I see him facing most of the same difficulties as in 2012 and unlikely to overcome any of them. But I don’t see Romney being foolish enough to run again, nor the Republican Party being desperate enough to draft him. But then again, my pickup could sprout wings...

Kasich – Honorable Mention

Ohio Governor John Kasich actually is running, but not doing too well; he finishes far below Trump and Cruz in nearly all of the primaries. Which, from a Republican point of view, should be regarded as a shame, since he’s the only one doing tolerably well against Clinton or Sanders in the polls; he leads Clinton, just, in most polls, and a few of them have him marginally beating Sanders (though well within the margins of error).

Given that he’s the Republican candidate with the best chance against Clinton or Sanders, its mystifying that he’s doing so poorly in the primaries; he has less than 150 delegates, against Cruz’ 500+ and Trump’s 700+.

If the GOP were being terribly rational of late, Kasich would be the obvious choice. But the GOP has not been all that rational of late. By and large, Republicans voters would apparently rather shoot themselves in the foot than run someone who actually has a chance of victory in the fall.

That foot-shooting is going to take a lot of guns. Good thing the NRA has worked so tirelessly to keep them all armed.

In Conclusion

I’m not a pollster or a politician, nor am I particularly good at interpreting their work, though I can read when one number is larger than another. I’m not a Republican either, but I know a party in trouble when I see one.

I’m not a railroad engineer but I know enough to get the hell off the tracks when a train is coming.

I’ve always found something inherently untrustworthy in polls. I realize that they seldom tell the whole story, and I know how easily a poll can be slanted to favor one candidate over another.

But here’s the thing: Polls, while imperfect, are generally accurate, broadly speaking and taken as a whole. If all of the polls, as a group, are telling you something then you should probably give them a listen. Make up your own mind, by all means, but you should at least hear what they’re trying to tell you.

We’re more than three months from the Republican National Convention and that’s plenty of time for almost anything to happen. As it stands right now, it doesn’t look like any Republican candidate is likely to bag enough delegates in advance of the convention to secure the nomination. That means that the final nominee could be either Trump or Cruz, or Ryan or Romney may swoop in at the last minute and “rescue” the party from itself. I’m not sure that such a rescue would be better than the peril.

Then again, my truck may fly. Hey, it could happen...

The Blues Viking
The opinions expressed here are mine and if you don’t like them you can get your own damn blog.




GOP Ryan Loses to Clinton, Sanders (Rassmussen Reports) 4-7-2016

2016 Presidential Race Polls (Real Clear Politics)

Federal 'birther' lawsuit challenges Canadian-born Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president (Daily Mail) 2-12-2016

Poll numbers: What women voters think of Donald Trump (CNN) 3-31-2016

Wikipedia on the "Know-Nothing" Party

Donald Trump and White House bids: a long history of not running (USA Today) 6-15-2015

Romney/Ryan Wouldn't be GOP Salvation Against Clinton (Public Policy Polling) 3-31-2016