What Percentage of the Republican Party Will Vote in 2016?
by paradox
Frantic efforts of Reince Priebus aside to put out the fierce dumpster fire of the Trump candidacy, it appears fairly certain that Donald Trump with be the Republican Party 2016 Presidential nominee. Thomas Mann and Billmon automatically hoisted the red flag, for any modern American presidential race will be technically close, the Republican nominee automatically getting 45% of the vote from the fanatically loyal Republican tribe. Right?
Ah, no. As the old saying goes if you want to be wrong, predict the future, but there is no way Donald Trump comes close to the 47% Mitt Romney pulled in 2012, absolutely no way. As Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post a Trump candidacy is a total mess, Republican strategists rightly worried that a “non-trivial amount” of Republican base voters will stay home.
We’ve become used to it, but the arrogance and hypocrisy of the authoritarian mind is really quite remarkable, and nowhere do these mental hammers bang so loudly around sexuality. The levers of shame and control are far too tempting to ignore, even if they’re incapable of applying their constructs to their own lives.
Thus Sarah Palin’s daughter, amazingly, continues to preach abstinence while having pre-marital children, and the heinous treatment of women by Donald Trump is instantly shrugged off by a huge part of the Republican base, as long as the liberals are being screwed it doesn’t matter.
However, there is a significant part of the Republican female base, quiet, loyal and pious, that truly did live a life of pre-marital abstinence (or slept with the one partner they would eventually marry) and really has led a life of dignified monogamy. For a Republican presidential candidate to boast about his penis size and disparage an opponent’s wife’s appearance—let alone the wandering promiscuity of Trump—is an outrageous affront to their values.
I know more than a few Republican men, and if there’s one basic thread among them it’s competence, whatever they’ve decided to apply their lives to they want to do it well and with pride. Then they go out and earn it with the timeless principles that have always worked: honesty, diligence, tolerance, and fairness. Donald Trump, he of multiple bankruptcies and grossly distasteful personality traits, will manifestly offend them and they won’t vote for Trump either.
No, they won’t for Hillary or Bernie, they just won’t vote for President, if they’re motivated to vote at all.
How pleased and assured I am with the social trends and mores of our young people, how alarmed and worried I am that we’ve let them down and not built a worthy country for them. They’re extremely tolerant in sexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender are all very acceptable life choices, and they highly resent social and government intrusion there.
Rightly so they’re frantically worried about climate change and a stable planet biology, plus a smashed labor market has them legitimately left them with a deep yearning for a government that works on applied problems. As noted before the vastly empty and offensive Republican stances on these issues has pushed our youth to the Democratic Party steadily since 2000, and what’s left of them on the Republican side will vote for Trump in a massively degraded participation rate.
As many fun articles have astutely pointed out, Trump is merely a stark manifestation of a Republican Party in obvious regression, all they have is increased military spending, lower taxes, “free trade,” and obnoxious very unpopular sexual mores.
Military spending is already insanely high, Republican tax cuts always absurdly go the wealthiest, and “free trade” has regressed into a useless idea that only hazily represents screwing unions. They simply have nothing to offer to fix any of our most urgent problems of present and future, their base is outraged at being used and losing their social status, and most critically of all cannot perceive and harness the truth, Fox News doomed them to chasing phantoms.
At some point the dumpster fire is going to get too hot for some Republican Party members and they’ll sit 2016 out. It’s amazing how political tribal loyalty has masked gross Republican incompetence in the past, by God if the liberals are there to be voted against the Republican base always shows up at 45% to vote.
No way, not this time with Donald Trump as the 2016 Republican nominee. My personal prediction is a 7% degradation rate, the Republican base will come in at 38% for Trump. We shall see.