Out of interest, do you think any of these candidates are any good a) In terms of your personal preference and b) in terms of electability
Okay.
I'm afraid I have an unhealthy obsession with these guys and spend too much time watching clips and reading about them. Like some people on here know a lot about football or horse-racing, I like to follow US politics. Not really sure why. I've tried to keep it as short as I can.
It's an unusual contest on the Republican side this time, and no-one knows how it is going to run out. For a start, there are far too many candidates still running. The Republican field usually consists of several well-respected ex-Governors or Senators who have served their time doing good work on committees and such-like for many years, a couple of upstart Senators making a mark for the next time and an evangelical outsider. The result has been a solid experienced candidate like Dole/GWBush/McCain/Romney, but the equivalent 'sensible' candidates this time (
Christie, Pataki, Graham, Bush, Gilmore, Kasich) are floundering. None of these are liberals. You just have to look at the history of what they have supported or approved to realise that they are all pretty right-wing. Gilmore, for example, is a Director of the NRA. It is just that some of the others are so far-right that they make these look like moderates. Christie and Bush got some traction at the recent debate and may have a route back, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the rest.
There has been a lot of support for non-politicians from voters who claim to be tired of professional politicians. Another unusual factor is that the Republicans should have a shot at the Hispanic vote this time with both Rubio and Cruz having Cuban parents. Neither, though, has strong support outside of Cubans, who form a small proportion of Hispanics. Bush also has big Hispanic appeal - he has a degree in Latin American Studies, speaks Spanish fluently and his wife is Mexican. Although his overall figures are low, he could pick up delegates from concentration of Hispanic voters. Also, the Mexican vote is much larger than the Cuban.
When
Trump joined the race last summer he was seen as a novelty candidate with no chance of winning. There is his clown-like persona, and he has mostly been a liberal in the past. He is against the cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that a lot of the other candidates are proposing. Initial jibes were about whether he was really a conservative, his history of flip-flopping on issues and his closeness to the Clintons. When he did well in polls, it was assumed that it was just due to being well known and his populist anti-politician stance and he would fade once he had to explain his political views and his bombastic style began to annoy the public. He has made a series of outlandish statements and has met criticism with personal insults. Either of these would have been disastrous in the past but, the more outrageous his statements, the more his polling has improved. There is still the possibility that he will say something that causes his campaign to explode, but he is now being taken seriously. Just this week, Hillary said she is no longer laughing at his candidacy.
Cruz was expected to be occupying the role that Trump is in until Trump came along. He has a stellar legal background - outstanding at Harvard, national debate champion, won more cases at the Supreme Court than anyone in history when he was Solicitor General of Texas. He went to the Senate, though, as an anti-politician. Most first-term Senators toe the line, serve on some committees and work their way through the system. Cruz took a non-conformist approach never seen before from a junior Senator, picking numerous fights, mostly with the leadership of his own side. The Republican establishment hates him, but he was appealing over their heads to the conservative voters by floating some very right-wing ideas. Trump came along and went one step further. Cruz proposed armed guards patrolling the Mexican border; Trump wants to build a wall, and so on. Cruz has responded by refusing to criticise Trump. He is waiting for the Trump collapse, when he hopes to inherit Trump's supporters, though he has already improved to second place at just the right time. He could win Iowa.
Rubio looks the part of the good-looking young Senator. In fact, he's the same age as Cruz. Previously Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, he has spent one term as Senator. Also extremely right-wing, though less so on immigration, the establishment would settle for him if they have to in preference to Cruz or Trump. He is the only Republican who beats Clinton in some head-to-head polls and has been the most articulate in the debates, mastering the three-part answer. He also knows his stuff - when Trump was exposed as not knowing what the nuclear triad is, Rubio stepped in and explained it clearly. His problem is that he isn't leading anywhere yet, so may not get the delegates his polling numbers suggest. He is third in Iowa, fourth in South Carolina and Trump seems to have New Hampshire sown up. Worse, he doesn't seem to have much organization going on in those early States. He really didn't need another establishment man like Christie making up ground.
Bush started the race as favourite but hasn't impressed, especially in the debates. Trump seemed to nail it when he said Bush was 'low energy'. His policies are generally quite reasonable and he is still the most electable of the sensible candidates (or the most sensible of the electable candidates). His slow humiliation has been embarrassing to watch but he has come to life a bit recently and could possibly be resurrected.
Huckabee has been around this block before and was ahead of McCain in 08 and Romney in 12 before it went wrong. A former Pastor, he founded and ran Christian TV channels before entering politics. Also a former Governor, he published a book this year called
God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy, which pretty much sums him up. Incidentally, he was born in Hope, the same small town as Bill Clinton.
Santorum is another religious nut who has issues with the theory of evolution, but he is likely to drop out soon.
Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard, doesn't belong in the race and has made no progress. She should get out, but she has a billionaire backer.
Carson, the other non-politician, flew high for a period but has exposed himself as a nut-job and is fading.
Paul is an odd guy who I can never take seriously, cos he just doesn't look like a President. He has Tea Party support and is very conservative on some issues, but has unique positions on others. He is non-interventionist on foreign policy (or isolationist according to the others).
It's a pity that Trump's noise is drowning out everything else, as there are some interesting discussions going on. For example, Rubio, Bush and Carson want to send in troops to get rid of Assad and tackle ISIS, whereas Trump and Cruz say that toppling the leaders of Iraq and Libya was a mistake and want to stick to an air war on just one front. Bizarrely, Cruz wants to go for regime change in Iran. Paul seems to want to do none of it.
Being front-runner guarantees little. Bush and Scott Walker led the polls for the first six months of this year - now Bush is sinking and Walker is no longer even in the race. Usually, there would be little point in candidates who are polling 2-3% (0% in some cases) hanging around. If Trump screws up by going too far, though, there will be a huge number of votes suddenly available, which could go anywhere. Cruz in particular, but also Rubio, are well-placed to pick up the majority, but no-one can be certain. If Trump gets desperate, he could attack Cruz' birth-right (he was born in Canada), which could get very messy. So the no-hopers hang in. That can only go so far though. If Iowa and New Hampshire go as expected, we could be down to Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Bush and Christie within weeks.
Here are a couple of graphs from earlier in the year that might help to place them. Sure, they present something complex in a simplistic manner, but what can you do? Since this was done, the gap has widened. The success of Sanders on the one hand and Cruz etc on the other has forced Clinton to sound more progressive and the moderate Republicans to move to the right, leaving a huge centrist area unoccupied. Before his various recent high-profile announcements, Trump would have been around the centre of the first graph, certainly to the left of Christie. I'm not quite sure where he would sit now.
| Click to see full-size image. |
| Click to see full-size image. |
Rubio, Paul and Santorum all attract Tea Party support and Carson gets his religion out a lot, but you get the idea. The sane candidates are found in the top left quarter.
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