Who has a better chance of being the GOP nominee?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

?

[Stranger in a strange land]

Perry: if Gingrich and Romney both collapse catastrophically in the next month, Perry could (implausibly) be left as the last man standing. Paul has a hard cap at 20% support, and there is no way that the powers that be within the Republican party - not to say the majority of the Republican base - will ever, ever let him be nominated. Perry will at least keep the support of the establishment. No matter how many embarrassing gaffes he makes, he still serves their interests and agrees with them on the core issues.

Of course, it goes without saying that Paul and Perry would both go down in flames in the general election.

[Torie]

Yes.  If Paul got the nomination, I suspect Obama would get about a third of the Pubbie vote, maybe more. It ain't happening. Neither gentleman are in play of course, so the question is moot.

[Zarn]

You guys don't like using polls, only personal feelings?

Paul usually polls the best or second best against Obama. Romney is the other one that polls relatively well. Obama has a rather difficult time with independents against Paul, even more so than with Romney.

[Frodo]

As crazy as he is, at least Ron Paul knows how to use his brain. 

Rick Perry, on the other hand.... 

[RosettaStoned]

Ron Paul. Easily.

[Jackson]

Rick Perry. Not even a contest.

[LastVoter]

Ron Paul, if there is some really epic vote splitting going on. Santorum would get elected before Perry.

[Bacon King]

There's absolutely zero chance that Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination. He benefits right now because the media and the other candidates mostly ignore him. The second he starts gaining some serious momentum, though, the entire GOP establishment will be lobbing attacks against him more rapidly than Politico makes threads about Gingrich. And Ron Paul has a lot of crazy quotes out there, too.

So Rick Perry has a better chance by default. A small chance, but it's there. I could maaybe see Perry possibly winning like Kerry did in 2004: being in the right place to pick up support when the two frontrunners implode from harshly negative campaigning. Not likely, but it's at least plausible, which is more than I can say for a Ron Paul nomination.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Paul usually polls the best or second best against Obama. Romney is the other one that polls relatively well. Obama has a rather difficult time with independents against Paul, even more so than with Romney.

Paul might be ahead of Perry in the polls, but his views are too much at odds with the Republican base and the Republican establishment for him to win. His opposition to corporate welfare, the drug war, interventionist foreign policy, and aid to Israel make him an unacceptable candidate to big business, the military industrial complex, and the religious right. Do you really think Rupert Murdoch, Roger Alies, and Rush Limbaugh will let Paul be nominated? Of course not. They've done everything they can to ignore him, and if it looks like he's gaining steam, they'll attack him with everything they've got. Perry's lack of intelligence is much less of a problem for them than Paul's ideological deviation. And besides, we all know that the Republican base doesn't mind being represented by a tongue-tied, inarticulate candidate who struggles to put a sentence together and can't think on his feet to save his life.

Perry has about a 1% chance of winning the Republican nomination, while Paul has about a .01% chance.

[Lief 🗽]

Anyone who votes Paul in this poll is a dumb.

[Meeker]

www.rickperry.com

hehe. Those Paulites are so clever

[Politico]

Perry has about a 1% chance of winning the Republican nomination, while Paul has about a .01% chance.

Well put.

[Zarn]

I'm reading all these posts, and I'm not see one real answer why Perry has a shot and Paul doesn't. It's like these people have no idea how Republicans of any variety think.

[BigSkyBob]

Paul has zero chance of being the nominee because if it appeared he was going to win the nomination the party would go to whatever lengths necessary to stop even if that meant disbanding the party.

[The_Texas_Libertarian]

If Paul won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, etc you would see the GOP leadership have a panic attack.  They would jump behind a safe candidate like Romney and have a brokered convention to ensure Paul doesn't get the nomination

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

If Paul won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, etc you would see the GOP leadership have a panic attack.  They would jump behind a safe candidate like Romney and have a brokered convention to ensure Paul doesn't get the nomination

Goldwater managed to beat the GOP leadership in 1964, and that was before there was an internet and recession.

[Bacon King]

If Paul won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, etc you would see the GOP leadership have a panic attack.  They would jump behind a safe candidate like Romney and have a brokered convention to ensure Paul doesn't get the nomination

Goldwater managed to beat the GOP leadership in 1964, and that was before there was an internet and recession.

That was also before Reaganites had a monolithic control over the party's infrastructure.

If Paul won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, etc you would see the GOP leadership have a panic attack.  They would jump behind a safe candidate like Romney and have a brokered convention to ensure Paul doesn't get the nomination

If this were to happen, you'd definitely see a lot of questionable shenanigans going on at the upper level meetings of the caucus states, to ensure that Paul doesn't get nearly as many delegates as he's "entitled" to... unlike the Democrats, very few GOP caucus states have any defined rules for delegate allocation, so county/state party leadership has a surprising amount of leeway to fudge things in their favor.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

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Paul isn't diametrically opposed to the Reaganites, just more extreme. If they saw him winning, I doubt they'd play every card in stopping him if it could ruin their chances of expanding the GOP base to otherwise independent civil libertarians (though they'd try).

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They did that in 2007 in Nevada and Washington's caucuses. Anyway, Paul supporters have long been infiltrating local GOP leadership (for example, the apparatus of the Iowa Republican Party is basically under his thumb going by endorsements), so they could probably at least stop the most blatant of shenanigans.

[Stranger in a strange land]

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Paul isn't diametrically opposed to the Reaganites, just more extreme. If they saw him winning, I doubt they'd play every card in stopping him if it could ruin their chances of expanding the GOP base to otherwise independent civil libertarians (though they'd try).

They absolutely would: Paul is anathema to the religious right (who Reagan brought into the GOP) because of his views on drugs and Israel, among others. They would do everything they could to stop him. The corporate interests that dominate the party would also oppose Paul because of his opposition to corporate welfare and his pledges to abolish or weaken agencies which effectively serve to subsidize them.

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They did that in 2007 in Nevada and Washington's caucuses. Anyway, Paul supporters have long been infiltrating local GOP leadership (for example, the apparatus of the Iowa Republican Party is basically under his thumb going by endorsements), so they could probably at least stop the most blatant of shenanigans.

Perhaps, but the old establishment is still in power in most places, and Paul isn't going to get any support from the old Dixiecrat establishment in the South (which is now the Republican establishment).

[Bacon King]

They did that in 2007 in Nevada and Washington's caucuses. Anyway, Paul supporters have long been infiltrating local GOP leadership (for example, the apparatus of the Iowa Republican Party is basically under his thumb going by endorsements), so they could probably at least stop the most blatant of shenanigans.

They didn't even wait until the later stages to fudge Washington's results, though

I doubt you could assume that Paul has that much influence in the Iowa GOP going by endorsements, though. On the county level, all of his endorsements have come from Clay and Story County GOP leadership. Statewide, he has the support of only five people on the 21-member Central Committee, none of whom are on the executive council (and three of the five represent Story County's congressional district, lol). Based on that, it looks like his people would probably be able to prevent procedural abuses at the 3rd District's Caucus, but not in any other district and not at the statewide meeting.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

They did that in 2007 in Nevada and Washington's caucuses. Anyway, Paul supporters have long been infiltrating local GOP leadership (for example, the apparatus of the Iowa Republican Party is basically under his thumb going by endorsements), so they could probably at least stop the most blatant of shenanigans.

They didn't even wait until the later stages to fudge Washington's results, though

I doubt you could assume that Paul has that much influence in the Iowa GOP going by endorsements, though. On the county level, all of his endorsements have come from Clay and Story County GOP leadership. Statewide, he has the support of only five people on the 21-member Central Committee, none of whom are on the executive council (and three of the five represent Story County's congressional district, lol). Based on that, it looks like his people would probably be able to prevent procedural abuses at the 3rd District's Caucus, but not in any other district and not at the statewide meeting.

I like to think that the fascists in the Republican party at least don't constitute a majority without counting the Ron Paul supporters. Anyway, were the abuses blatant enough Paul could run third party or split off from the Republicans, and that would basically doom the Republican candidate short of Obama getting caught molesting a child. That threat is present enough for me to think that they won't do absolutely everything.

[Stranger in a strange land]

They did that in 2007 in Nevada and Washington's caucuses. Anyway, Paul supporters have long been infiltrating local GOP leadership (for example, the apparatus of the Iowa Republican Party is basically under his thumb going by endorsements), so they could probably at least stop the most blatant of shenanigans.

They didn't even wait until the later stages to fudge Washington's results, though

I doubt you could assume that Paul has that much influence in the Iowa GOP going by endorsements, though. On the county level, all of his endorsements have come from Clay and Story County GOP leadership. Statewide, he has the support of only five people on the 21-member Central Committee, none of whom are on the executive council (and three of the five represent Story County's congressional district, lol). Based on that, it looks like his people would probably be able to prevent procedural abuses at the 3rd District's Caucus, but not in any other district and not at the statewide meeting.

I like to think that the fascists in the Republican party at least don't constitute a majority without counting the Ron Paul supporters. Anyway, were the abuses blatant enough Paul could run third party or split off from the Republicans, and that would basically doom the Republican candidate short of Obama getting caught molesting a child. That threat is present enough for me to think that they won't do absolutely everything.

They'd shut down the Republican National Convention and select a nominee in a smoke-filled room if that's what it took to shut Paul out of the nomination. Of course, if that were to happen, there's a good chance Paul would run third party, which would doom their nominee's chances in the general. Of course, they have a less than even chance of winning the general anyway with the current sorry crop of candidates, and Paul running 3rd party would at least bring out right-leaning libertarians who would be more likely to vote Republican in down-ballot races, so it wouldn't completely destroy the Republican party.