DailyNewsbin Games out Who Will Win GOP Primary

Reince Priebus is sounding the alarm: the GOP simply has to win in 2016 or 'we're cooked as a party.'

"In an interview published early Friday morning, he told the Washington Examiner that even during a presidential election year, the RNC is still responsible for supporting House and Senate candidates.

"However, I think that we have become, unfortunately, a midterm party that doesn't lose and a presidential party that's had a really hard time winning," Priebus told the Examiner. "We're seeing more and more that if you don't hold the White House, it's very difficult to govern in this country — especially in Washington D.C."

"So I think that — I do think that we're cooked as a party for quite a while as a party if we don't win in 2016. So I do think that it's going to be hard to dig out of something like that," he continued.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/reince-priebus-2016-cooked-gop

Well it's true the GOP over the last 20 years has become a very good midterm party and a poor Presidential election party. This is ironic as it was the opposite for about 40 years previously starting with Ike.

Though while most think they will hold on to the House at least through 2020, you almost wonder now that they can't even elect a Speaker anymore.

It's not clear at all how they win the Presidency anytime soon thanks to the 'blue wall'-but this year in particular their field is so chaotic it seems most unlikely.

Now Bill Palmer at DailyNewsBin has an interesting gaming out of what we might see in the GOP primary-though he's probably right that the smartest thing anyone can say is I don't know.

"Just to cut the choices down, I think you can safely eliminate the following candidates: Rand Paul, whose unique worldview no longer appeals to almost anyone. Chris Christie, who went off the rails a long time ago. Ted Cruz, who has lost most of the tea party extremist support to the outsider candidates. Mike Huckabee, who has lost most of the conservative-christian extremist vote to the outsiders. And throw out Jindal, Santorum, Pataki and Graham because they were never in it to begin with."

http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/whos-really-going-to-be-the-2016-republican-party-nominee-heres-my-educated-guess/22833/

Excellent analysis. In a previous piece about the Trump-Carson concessions they won on the CNBC GOP debate, I argued that they were right to want to keep it to two hours including commercials but that ideally you wish you could get rid of a lot of the candidates that have no hope of winning.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/cnbc-caves-to-trumps-debate-demands.html

Rachel Maddow has complained vociferously that it's wrong to let the pollsters decide but while I love Rachel I do disagree with her vigorously here.

I don't think loading up a debate with a lot of people who have no chance of winning somehow makes it more democratic. Our Democratic debate is so small we can afford a Martin O'Malley at another debate, though it seems to me even with a small field, Lincoln Chafee and certainly Jim Webb serve no useful purpose.

It might give us more numbers but it makes it more chaotic and less of a quality debate. Many have talked about how the GOP debate has been a wrestling match. Part of this is due to the nature of today's GOP but part having so many candidates hardly helps.

Back to Bill Palmer. I like what he said here and those he named as having no chance I think we could safely 'not invite' to the debate and it would actually give us a much better debate. Maybe you couldn't dismiss Ted Cruz even if Palmer is right-as he has actually placed third in many recent polls- but the rest I think it would be very fair to not invite them.

"That leaves us with the following candidates, in no particular order, each having a greater-than-zero chance of winning the nomination: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich. That’s three outsiders and three established politicians. The republican party establishment does not want any of the outsiders to be the nominee, for multiple reasons. And I believe most republican voters don’t want an outsider either. But the party is in such chaos that it’s possible it could end up with a nominee it doesn’t want."

My perception by the way is that Kasich isn't viable either-he's seen as too moderate or centrist by the base despite how conservative he actually is on issues like abortion. He did say something compassionate sounding at the first debate on immigration and this alone probably disqualifies him. I don't think he outruns this centrist image. He sounds to reasonable.

Palmer concurs:

"Now for the insider candidates. John Kasich has the benefit of coming off as the only reasonable republican in the race, relatively speaking. That helps him with moderates, but primaries are decided by the party’s base, and it no longer has any moderates. Marco Rubio is the only recognized name in the race who hasn’t been marched up and down the polls yet, which could help him. No one wants to be the frontrunner right now, because no one is going to remain the frontrunner six months straight. But my guess is that Rubio starts rising soon, gets exposed by the media for his career ineptness, and then goes the way of Scott Walker."

"That leaves Jeb Bush. Establishment republicans don’t seem to want him because they’re afraid yet another progressively less appealing Bush can’t win. And angry mob republicans certainly don’t want him either. Yet he’s the devil they know, and if all the other dominoes fall by the wayside, the republicans could end up settling on the overwhelmingly unpopular Jeb because they have nothing else to lose. Then again, he’s currently at 5% in the polls and that’s hard to imagine."

"So my educated guess is the following: Donald Trump has a very small chance, but only if things get super chaotic during the primary voting. Marco Rubio has a chance, but only if he’s lucky enough to avoid becoming the frontrunner too soon. John Kasich has a very small chance, and only if the two factions of the republican party are forced to settle on a compromise pick neither side wants. Jeb Bush has a small chance because he’s Jeb Bush. It’s a tricky question because it’s difficult to imagine any of these republican candidates getting the nomination – and yet one of them will. "

So each of these candidates has a small shot at winning and no one has a big shot. Makes sense.

I still think a likely scenario is Trump actually does have a ground game and wins lots of primaries. The establishment freaks and employs every dirty trick to keep him off the ballot. 

We end up with a brokered convention or something like it. The establishment imposes Jeb on the base or possibly Rubio. 

Trump starts his own party-after all, the GOP didn't treat him fairly-and he takes 10 to 20 percent of the base with him. The GOP loses a three candidate race in a landslide.