(03-19-2016 08:11 AM)mickeyd Wrote: We should expect a fake "tea party" or similarly labeled right-wing candidate to run 3rd party. This person will suddenly come out of no-where, with with tens of millions in dirty money to push in ads and campaigning. He will be similar to Cruz, mostly talking about how god and the constitution must be worshipped. It will cause a 3rd party spoiler.
Here's
a handy list of third party candidates for the Presidency.
The absolute cutoff for nominating for the Presidency seems to be in September 2016. That would mean that if there's going to be a run, it has to be in the next six months, and it has to be on a field wide enough to attract 10% of the vote in enough areas to deny Trump 270 Electoral College Votes.
The only groups that are even on sufficient ballots to even possibly get 270 electoral votes are the Greens and the Libertarians. Can't see either of them pulling a 10% swing nationwide in enough areas to deny Trump 270 votes. And money for paid media, as Trump is demonstrating, only goes so far. They've
spent 40 million -- Republican and Democrat -- on attack ads and negative publicity, and Trump's numbers have kept on rising, because he keeps dominating free media -- everytime the election is mentioned, his name keeps coming up.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but to raise a candidate that fast from zero to hero, with Trump's presence and manner dominating the airwaves, is going to involve not spending tens of millions, but hundreds of millions even to get a 10% swing against Trump nationwide. I really doubt six or seven months is enough time. Hell, Hilary is already attacking Trump and he's not even the Republican nominee yet - she knows as well as everyone else the clock is ticking out.
I saw an analysis that runs the line that it's very, very, very unlikely that they will try and steal Trump's nomination off him at the convention. The very fact the option has been discussed, in connection with Trump's genial assertion that "There could be rioting" and Cruz's assertion that "A brokered convention would be a disaster", means that the eyes of the nation if not the world will be on the RNC.
The American public is
expecting someone to try and diddle Trump out of the nomination because he's implicitly predicted that's what they'll do -- and the Republican Party has been kicking so many own-goals on this one you'd think they were playing for the Democrats.
First they didn't respond to his 'threat' early enough; second they then gave him oxygen by launching an all-out MSM press offensive against him; and third, they were dumb enough to even speak of the possibility that an elite few might try and take the nomination away from him in a backroom deal at the RNC. Doing so would prove Trump right, and any insider there must by now realise that if they go to a brokered convention and/or don't make Trump the candidate, it will be not just a lost election but a destroyed Republican Party for decades to come.