Yes, I have better things to do, but I think it's important that I let you all know how this Republican presidential nomination thing ends so we can move on from Donald Trump and into more consequential matters.
According to the latest CNN/ORC poll (scroll down to page 7), Trump is leading the pack 'o candidates with 24% support of the poll's respondents. The usual suspects follow, although we do have a new rising star in Carly Fiorina who went from 1% support in the July poll to 5% in August's.
OK.
What this simply means is that one quarter of respondents support Trump. Add up the others' scores and you have most respondents supporting someone other than Trump. Plus, Trump's negative ratings outpace his positives by about 30 percentage points. What this also means is that the Republican Party is still in the grips of an extremist bunch who say things like "I support Trump because he tells the truth."
No, he does not.
He says things that are provocative and media-friendly, and he says them loudly. He has no plan for the country and says that his strength is that he goes into negotiations with flexibility and tries to get the best deal possible. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but the Republican Party has not operated that way for the past 6 years, so I'll need some clarification as to whether the Tea Party is willing to back Donald knowing that he'll actually try to bargain with the Democrats. Or the so-called moderates in the GOP.
What Donald Trump has done is to alienate the one group that the GOP absolutely needs to win a national election, Hispanics, and has disrespected the other group that the GOP needs more support from, and that's women. And the longer Trump stays in the race and has a megaphone, the more he will do damage to the party. Which is good for Democrats. And the latest issue, that of changing the Fourteenth Amendment to disallow the children of undocumented immigrants to have birthright citizenship, is a losing one for the right. So naturally, half the field supports the change.
What's happening now in the Republican process will have a major effect on the race, and if you want to know what will happen, then please pay attention. The vast majority of the GOP field will make it to the Iowa Caucuses, and each one will get their moment in the media spotlight. Then they'll say or do something Republicany and fall by the wayside. Trump will not win Iowa. After that, the lowest performing five candidates will drop out. After New Hampshire, another five will go, including NJ Governor Chris Christie, because he won't win them and he won't have enough money to conduct a campaign across enough of the remaining states.
By this point, only the most well-funded candidates will still be in the race: Jeb, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and perhaps, Trump. They will then duke it out over the next month or so, and by the end of April at the latest, the GOP will have its candidate, and my guess is that it will be Kasich. He will then choose Marco Rubio to be his running mate at the convention.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton will win the nomination and choose a Hispanic-American as her running mate.
After that, we'll see, but you read it here first.
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