Current Events > The imaginary republican primary

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normally when a canidate runs for office they show up to the debate. Not trump, hes on trial and still leading his party. What is the point if a bunch of people show up to debate but the republicans don't have any intention to have them win?

Ubergeneral3 posted...

What is the point if a bunch of people show up to debate but the republicans don't have any intention to have them win?

A lot can happen in a year.

Trump become inelegible to run? That won't stop him from running for office. I don't even think him dying would stop the party from making him the candidate.

A lot of it boils down to the fact that "smart" people running campaigns like these are not smart at all and live in huge bubbles where they believe they'll somehow be the groundbreaking inheritor to either Trump's base or a backlash of Trump's base. A lot of Republicans running believe, absent any evidence, that Trump is a truly resisted force in the Republican party outside of a few rare exceptions.

It could be advisors/aides looking for money or the candidates trying to sell a book. A lot of them feel locked in: DeSantis and Haley are very much so now-or-never candidates who will be far past their prime in 2028. Haley hasn't totally self-destructed, but DeSantis has.

It's a lot of stupid people thinking they can outsmart the blunt reality that Trump is their idol and the guy who beat Clinton while all the other candidates are Bush-era ghouls known for losing to Democrats (or) are fraudsters trying to take up Trump's base even though Trump's running already. It gives his base the impression these guys (i.e. DeSantis) are somehow working to get Trump locked up or whatever.

Ramaswamy is the only candidate there who seems to be on stage to appeal to Trump directly but this is transparently a vying for future relevance or a cabinet position.

So there it is:

-Stupid people who run bad campaigns
-Complete delusion/cope
-Attention grabbers

It's all very ridiculous and it's the circus they deserve

I hate Trump as much as the next person, but he has a point. There's no need for him to debate when he's this far ahead of the other Republicans. That'd be like if one player lapped another player in Mario Kart and the player who was lagging behind said, "Let's settle this with dueling Koopa Shells."

I just hope he's forced out of the race (preferably by way of prison sentence... ). I would rather have anyone but him.

FortuneCookie posted...

I hate Trump as much as the next person, but he has a point. There's no need for him to debate when he's this far ahead of the other Republicans. That'd be like if one player lapped another player in Mario Kart and the player who was lagging behind said, "Let's settle this with dueling Koopa Shells."

I just hope he's forced out of the race (preferably by way of prison sentence... ). I would rather have anyone but him.

My own political biases aside I do agree that a candidate embraced and beloved so much he runs 40% ahead of a field of like ten people really has no obligation to take those ten people seriously.

also I cannot emphasize how much Trump being branded as a "winner" is important here and something most (if none) of the Rs running get: Clinton was the conservative white whale for two decades. They despised her and her influence. Trump winning over her was not only a victory for conservatives after a lot of clobberings post-Bush, it was him basically beating the final boss of the Democratic Party.

This is all very stupid and silly and childish but this is the exact mindframe a lot of his diehards approach this from. He's a proven "winner," and it's also why he can't concede to Biden: He can't afford to admit he's a loser because it means his ironclad mythos is destroyed, so insane shit is invented to fill the void of reality.

His base unquestionably believes him because he's a winner therefor he cannot be a loser therefor he's a winner so we vote for him. That's really why he's leading at the end of the day. To quote a great video pointing out the insanity of Qanon, "It doesn't make sense, it's not supposed to, it's about loyalty."

I think the question is why he is considered a "winner"

Couldn't any republican just say that they are going to a better job at doing trumpy things? Why even back a guy that lost? Just say your the smarter trump. I boggles me that people don't want to give up on him.

Ubergeneral3 posted...

I think the question is why he is considered a "winner"

Couldn't any republican just say that they are going to a better job at doing trumpy things? Why even back a guy that lost? Just say your the smarter trump. I boggles me that people don't want to give up on him.

they don't want smarter, they want someone as dumb as them.

Ubergeneral3 posted...

What is the point if a bunch of people show up to debate but the republicans don't have any intention to have them win?

It gets them all publicity for the books they're writing

You have to show respect to the electorate and the process.

Even if that means waiting in the wings for Trump to stumble or the angle for a VP slot.

It also cannot be underestimated how much Trump's base sees him as a political outlier compared to the rest of the Republican Party.

While other Republicans were preaching about responsibility politics and telling working class Americans that the economy is perfectly fine and they just need to work harder, Trump instead gave those people convenient scapegoats to blame for their own situations. Whether that be the "radical left", immigrants, "the swamp", etc.,

"Make America Great Again" is, first and foremost, an acknowledgment that America is in a shitty state, and that messaging resonated greatly with disgruntled, working-class whites who already held racist views. In other words, people who are indeed suffering under late-stage capitalism, but are too bigoted, miseducated and misinformed to correctly identify the problem.

It's literally the same exact strategy Hitler used to get people to rally behind the Nazis, hence why the party masqueraded as "National Socialists".