A Glimmer?

[Kathianne]

One can hope! Anyone who was around in 2016 knows I hoped against hope, then lost. LOL!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-looks-beatable-in-early-states-iowa-nh-polls-indictment-baaa4070?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s


OPINIONCOMMENTARY
Trump Looks Beatable in Early States
Majorities in Iowa and New Hampshire don’t back him. More defections may come.
By Karl Rove Aug. 23, 2023 5:54 pm ET




Traditionally, August is a slow month politically. Not this year for Republicans.


This week features two major events in less than 24 hours. On Wednesday the first GOP presidential debate was scheduled to occur, with eight candidates—none of them Donald Trump—on stage. (The start time was after this column’s deadline.) On Thursday, Mr. Trump, indicted for a fourth time, surrenders to officials in Georgia. It’s historic that the prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination is out on bail in four jurisdictions and his lead keeps increasing. The RealClearPolitics average has him at 55.9% while the rest of the field and the undecideds total just 44.1%.


Yet nominations are decided not by national polls but by state caucuses and primaries, with early states exercising disproportionate influence. The race so far has been more interesting in these first-to-vote states. Republican voters have seen a lot more of the non-Trump contenders than Mr. Trump. While nationally Mr. Trump is still far better known than the other options, these early states are getting familiar with the rest of the field. The result? A majority of early-state Republicans aren’t for Mr. Trump.


Take Iowa: The Aug. 17 Selzer NBC/Des Moines Register Poll had Mr. Trump as the first choice of 42% of Iowa GOP caucus-goers—a sizable lead, but still nearly 14 points below his national standing. An Aug. 17 Echelon Insights poll had Mr. Trump at 33%, while nationally he stood at 57%. In both polls, a majority of Iowa Republicans don’t consider the former president their favorite.


Admittedly, not every GOP primary voter will get to see contenders as close-up as Iowans do. ...


Mr. Trump’s opponents remain weak, but the gap between his national standing and these early-state numbers has to worry his campaign. It’s hard to say if the disparity will keep growing. But it could given Mr. Trump’s jam-packed courtroom calendar and his reluctance to spend time visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties or endure endless New Hampshire town halls.


To diminish that possibility, Mr. Trump’s strategists are doing all they can to create a sense of inevitability. But that carries risk. If his numbers falter even slightly, it will look a lot worse because expectations were needlessly raised.


Also important is the number of independents and Republicans open to the idea that Mr. Trump is a criminal. In an Aug. 16 AP/NORC poll, 45% of independents say he did something illegal with classified documents, 41% say he did something illegal in Georgia regarding the 2020 election, and 33% say he did something illegal related to Jan. 6.

Perhaps more worrying is the number of GOP voters unpersuaded of his innocence. Eighteen percent of Republicans told AP/NORC that Mr. Trump did something illegal with classified documents, while 21% “don’t know enough to say.” Similarly, 16% of Republicans felt he broke the law in Georgia and 27% weren’t sure. And 15% of Republicans felt his role in Jan. 6 was illegal; 16% didn’t know. ...


... The number of skeptical independents and Republicans will probably grow as he spends his days in court rather than campaigning—which should worry any Republican who wants victory in 2024.


Mr. Trump can afford to lose hardly any GOP or independent voters in November. He carried 94% of Republicans and 41% of independents in 2020 but still ran 7,059,526 votes behind Joe Biden. The AP/NORC poll suggests he’ll lose more than 6% of Republicans in 2024 and run much worse with independents.

If he is the nominee and Republicans and independents keep defecting, he’s sunk and so is his party. He may be stuck on that path. But the GOP doesn’t need to be.



The last two paragraphs? It's like Gunny ghost wrote for Rove.

[Black Diamond]

The other candidates would have to get behind one candidate alla Dems behind Biden vs bernie.

[Tyr-Ziu Saxnot]

The other candidates would have to get behind one candidate alla Dems behind Biden vs bernie.

I am in for Trump. I do not give 2 plug nickels for all this shit the media and government is doing to him. My stand is ffkk them buzzards....--Tyr

[Kathianne]

The other candidates would have to get behind one candidate alla Dems behind Biden vs bernie.

Actually I'd say it's more that people with commonsense and a sense of civil responsibility would get behind a choice beyond Trump.

Love his policies, go with DeSantis or Vivek. Want a general unknown? Guy that screwed up his foot today he'll be on crutches tonight. Woman? D'uh.

[Gunny]

The other candidates would have to get behind one candidate alla Dems behind Biden vs bernie.


Actually I'd say it's more that people with commonsense and a sense of civil responsibility would get behind a choice beyond Trump.

Love his policies, go with DeSantis or Vivek. Want a general unknown? Guy that screwed up his foot today he'll be on crutches tonight. Woman? D'uh.Who? is the question. If Trump disappeared today, who does the GOP have that can pull conservative, independent and daresay disaffected centrist Dem votes?

Kneejerk, right now, without knowing more, I'd guess Nikki Haley. She would present all kinds of problems for the Dems. Woman, ethnic minority, what I consider a moderate.

I don't think Trump is in any way. shape nor form done destroying the Republican party.

[Black Diamond]

Who? is the question. If Trump disappeared today, who does the GOP have that can pull conservative, independent and daresay disaffected centrist Dem votes?

Kneejerk, right now, without knowing more, I'd guess Nikki Haley. She would present all kinds of problems for the Dems. Woman, ethnic minority, what I consider a moderate.

I don't think Trump is in any way. shape nor form done destroying the Republican party.

You're talking about a different scenario which is OK.

If trump disappeared tomorrow i think DeSantis would win the nomination.

[Gunny]

You're talking about a different scenario which is OK.

If trump disappeared tomorrow i think DeSantis would win the nomination.Given "everything" and it's slant that I've seen so far, it's been labeled as nothing but a battle for second place and there was really no winner last night. The defining point was the show of hands on who would support Trump even if convicted. That could change after I've done more looking.

My reasoning with Haley that I worded in a negative light rather than a positive one is, IMO, she has more across the board appeal than the other candidates. She also has more positive name recognition than the other candidates. The MSM's tried to crap on her but has been less successful at getting it to stick than they have the others.

Just to keep it in perspective, I am NOT a Niki Haley fan. Just reading what there currently is of the board.

[Kathianne]

Given "everything" and it's slant that I've seen so far, it's been labeled as nothing but a battle for second place and there was really no winner last night. The defining point was the show of hands on who would support Trump even if convicted. That could change after I've done more looking.

My reasoning with Haley that I worded in a negative light rather than a positive one is, IMO, she has more across the board appeal than the other candidates. She also has more positive name recognition than the other candidates. The MSM's tried to crap on her but has been less successful at getting it to stick than they have the others.

Just to keep it in perspective, I am NOT a Niki Haley fan. Just reading what there currently is of the board.

You've got my two likely ones at this point. Nikki and DeSantis.

Vivek and Pence seemed in a contest to be the most unlikeable. The difference being, Pence is known beyond last night.

[fj1200]

^With any luck there will be some obvious winnowing of the field.

[Kathianne]

A bit off topic, but seems to fit here:

https://www.ft.com/content/cfb58582-2afb-4f5c-99ad-583684a32027?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9





The west is suffering from a crisis of courage


Trump’s refusal to turn up to the Republican debate is one more sign that this virtue is no longer held to be important
JEMIMA KELLYAdd to myFT






The first Republican primary debate, held in Milwaukee on Wednesday, was an unusual one: it featured no one who currently stands a chance of being the party’s candidate in next year’s presidential elections. The only man who does, Donald Trump, decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.


“I am leading the runner up, whoever that may now be, by more than 50 Points,” the four-times indicted former president wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. “People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?”


Trump confirmed on Sunday he would “NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”. Instead, he decided to sit down for an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor who said in private text messages in 2021 that Trump was a “demonic force”, but who has since backtracked, telling a conservative radio host this year: “I love Trump.”


A meeting of cowards, no doubt. And yet one can see that Trump has a point in asking why he should bother with the debate. Despite mounting legal problems, the former president continues to be streets ahead of the competition: he is at 55.4 per cent in RealClearPolitics’ polling average, while Ron DeSantis is trailing at 14.3 and none of the other Republican candidates have broken out of the single digits.


Furthermore, Trump knows he would have to square up to opponents such as Chris Christie, who has spent his campaign bragging that he would beat Trump in a real fight and making it his explicit mission to bring him down. Showing up would only really have one clear benefit for the former president, and it’s not the kind that he tends to be terribly interested in. It would show that he is in possession of an important moral virtue: courage.


Courage, though, seems to have fallen out of fashion. And not just for Trump or Carlson, or those in the Republican party who repeatedly refuse to call out the former president for any wrongdoing. A similar lack of backbone was on display when UK prime minister Rishi Sunak decided not to show up to the vote on whether former prime minister Boris Johnson had deliberately misled parliament over “partygate” (Sunak apparently had “longstanding engagements” that day).


And the problem is much broader than politics. Society itself seems to be suffering from a crisis of courage. This is clear when corporations succumb to social pressures by firing employees to protect their brands, or when they use the Pride flag in their social media avatars but not in the Middle East. Virtue signalling might be endemic, but courage, like honour, is not deemed a virtue worth signalling. Indeed all the incentives are stacked on the opposite side: there is little to lose from going along with what everyone is saying, even if you don’t believe it yourself, and much to gain from proving that you are on the “right” side.


Moral or intellectual courage — sticking your head above the parapet and saying what you really think — can, conversely, get you into a huge amount of trouble, and, usually, you are not rewarded for it.


The mere mention of courage has been in decline for a long time. A 2012 paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology that tracked how frequently words related to moral excellence appeared in American books — both fiction and non-fiction — over the 20th century, found that the use of the words courage, bravery and fortitude (which were grouped together) had fallen by two-thirds over the period.


During the years that the US was involved in the second world war, the average frequency of these words was almost 19 per cent higher than the four years before and after its war involvement. Selin Kesebir, associate professor of organisational behaviour at the London Business School and co-author of the paper, tells me that one reason why we in the west now speak less of courage is that, at present, we live in relatively safe times. Our lack of need for physical courage, in other words, precludes a focus on moral courage in the public conversation.


“If there is a real threat, then courage becomes necessary,” Kesebir says. “But in environments where there aren’t any very real threats, we don’t need to invoke it as a virtue.”


Moral courage does not equate to recklessness, and neither does it mean being a provocateur for the sake of it. According to Aristotle, courage should be thought of as a kind of mediator between cowardice and recklessness.


But if we want our societies to thrive, we must be courageous enough to think for ourselves and stand up for what we believe in. The late writer Maya Angelou was right when she said: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practise any other virtue consistently.”

[Gunny]

A bit off topic, but seems to fit here:

https://www.ft.com/content/cfb58582-2afb-4f5c-99ad-583684a32027?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9The mentality that all this is about is second place from both parties annoys the Hell out of me. Second place is not acceptable Gunny-think, except if that's where you end up in the end after having done your best. Start the game playing to win.

The Dems don't have to play to win when the Republicans are so busy defeating themselves. Republican candidates running for second place to a wannabe that's going to come in in second place.

What a country:rolleyes: