At this point, which would be the smarter move for Republicans?

[Crumpets]

As a Democrat, I would be more concerned if they managed to put in a "normal" Republican at this point, since I think the gesture would win enough moderates back to cover losing Trump's base. Plus, it would put the party in better standing going forward than with Trump's shrinking demographics.

I ask because it seems like a lot of Democrats are salivating over the prospect of Trump being kicked out, and I'm not sure that's really the best option for them.

Discuss with maps, as always.

[Dr. Arch]

I would be glad if his base left the party so that we would have at least two sane major party candidates discussing policies and solutions. Imagine that, options!

[ag]

For the moment it is still the former.

[anthonyjg]

Keeping Trump is the better move. I would imagine it would be easier to win back moderates for future elections than it would be to win back Trump supporters after their candidate was just dumped by the party.

[Senator-elect Spark]

If Trump was dropped for another Republican, the GOP would lose his base and wouldn't gain enough moderates to cover for it. It is too late to even consider this proposition because it would probably hurt the party more than if Trump just lost. Many Republicans would stay home and feel cheated.

Probably would look something like this:

Hillary Clinton (D-NY) / Tim Kaine (D-VA) - 500 EVs, (76.3%)
Generic Candidate (R) / Generic VP (R) - 38 EVs, (22.1%)
Other - 0 EVs, (1.4%)

[Wisconsin+17]

It's only August. There's enough time to Dump trump and rebuild.

[Xing]

I think both options are terrible for Republicans, so the best that they can probably do at this point is to pretty much give up hope of winning the presidential election, while investing in downballot races, hoping for a lot of people to split their tickets.

[Wells]

Dumping him would be better for them in the long run, and it would be better for the country.

[Wisconsin+17]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Good riddance!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Trump's gonna lose, we have nothing to lose by dumping him now and moving on.

[BlueSwan]

The best option would be pursuading Trump that he drop out using whichever excuse suits him and then run a consensus candidate like Paul Ryan. A few weeks ago I would have said that there was no way in hell you could do that. Trump wouldn't go for it. But now with Trump getting crushed in the polls and him starting to talk about the election being rigged he's at least got the excuse ready for dropping out (it's all rigged). I'm sure his ego is dreading the shellacking that he might receive. For the record I don't think this scenario is likely, but it no longer seems crazy to imagine it happening.

[Redban]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Good riddance!

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Trump's gonna lose, we have nothing to lose by dumping him now and moving on.

Integrity, respect for the political process, respect for the voters --- I think you have much to lose, regardless of his odds in November.

[hurricanehink]

Endorse Johnson, so the election will be about the role of government, not the role of Donald Trump in America (which has proven to be divisive and dangerous).

[ag]

The best strategy for Trump-comfortable Republicans right now is building up Johnson. If Johnson gets into the debates and this becomes a 3-way race, Trump has a chance: he can easily get to 35%.

[Heisenberg]

Keep Trump, keep the margin within reason, but focus more on hanging on to the Senate and House.

[Simfan34]

Trump's base, as I have been saying, are either a) criminally misinformed, and/or b) simply bad, bigoted, people. The GOP would benefit in the long run from simply rejecting such people and effectively removing them, or at least internally disenfranchising (i.e., within primaries and other party decision-making processes) them, from the party. American political life and society in general would likewise benefit from the political disempowerment and overall marginalisation of such people and their views. Indeed, I don't think the "long run" would even be that long.

However that being said I'm not sure if the above could be more effectively accomplished following a landslide Trump defeat rather than by just removing him from the ticket. A crushing defeat would fully legitimise assigning culpability with not just Trump but the primary electorate at large for selecting him, and restricting their influence accordingly. Blame must be squarely laid at the feet of the people in order for meaningful action to take place.

Furthermore conservatives will need to think long and hard about the consequences of having facilitated the creation of such a self-contained right-wing media bubble, namely, the delegitimization of the traditional media and any attempt to disprove falsehoods circulated within this bubble, in favor of  "conservative" a de facto alternate universe with its own, separate set of "facts" and "truths". It is the imperviousness of this bubble-- and, correspondingly, the minds of many Republican voters-- to outside criticisms that led to Trump being nominated and retaining the support of most Republicans despite a degree of personal and political hypocrisy and generally distasteful behavior that should have,  from a conservative viewpoint, been completely disqualifying.

Media fragmentation, partisan echo chambers, or even "post-truth politics" are phenomena neither peculiar to the American right nor even the United States, but their impact has been far more acute in this instance than elsewhere. This might not necessarily require going as far as to restore the Fairness Doctrine, but it does require shifting conservatives (back) to a frame of mind where they are at least somewhat receptive to criticism of their accepted beliefs and favored politicians rather than wholly in thrall to dishonest, small-minded charlatans like Katrina Pierson and Ann Coulter. For starters, Republican and conservative leaders would be well advised to encourage the Murdoch brothers' reputed desire to shift Fox News away from its nakedly partisan stance. Their base should not be entirely impervious to the facts.

With all this in mind, the first option would probably be the preferable one from a strategic perspective, as opposed to one simply focused on getting the best result in November. Indeed, the worse the result, the better-- provided the only people left in Congress aren't the crazies in the Freedom Caucus and so forth.

[MasterJedi]

Dump Trump, this election cycle is lost and the base would come back by 2020 because they wouldn't vote for Clinton again and are too lazy and bigoted to start their own party.

[Darthpi – Anti-Florida Activist]

Short term: Keep him and avoid alienating his base for this election cycle.

Long term: Dump him and avoid permanently alienating even more minority and college-educated white voters.

And this is why they don't know what to do.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Trump's base, as I have been saying, are either a) criminally misinformed, and/or b) simply bad, bigoted, people. The GOP would benefit in the long run from simply rejecting such people and effectively removing them, or at least internally disenfranchising (i.e., within primaries and other party decision-making processes) them, from the party. American political life and society in general would likewise benefit from the political disempowerment and overall marginalisation of such people and their views. Indeed, I don't think the "long run" would even be that long.

However that being said I'm not sure if the above could be more effectively accomplished following a landslide Trump defeat rather than by just removing him from the ticket. A crushing defeat would fully legitimise assigning culpability with not just Trump but the primary electorate at large for selecting him, and restricting their influence accordingly. Blame must be squarely laid at the feet of the people in order for meaningful action to take place.

Furthermore conservatives will need to think long and hard about the consequences of having facilitated the creation of such a self-contained right-wing media bubble, namely, the delegitimization of the traditional media and any attempt to disprove falsehoods circulated within this bubble, in favor of  "conservative" a de facto alternate universe with its own, separate set of "facts" and "truths". It is the imperviousness of this bubble-- and, correspondingly, the minds of many Republican voters-- to outside criticisms that led to Trump being nominated and retaining the support of most Republicans despite a degree of personal and political hypocrisy and generally distasteful behavior that should have,  from a conservative viewpoint, been completely disqualifying.

Media fragmentation, partisan echo chambers, or even "post-truth politics" are phenomena neither peculiar to the American right nor even the United States, but their impact has been far more acute in this instance than elsewhere. This might not necessarily require going as far as to restore the Fairness Doctrine, but it does require shifting conservatives (back) to a frame of mind where they are at least somewhat receptive to criticism of their accepted beliefs and favored politicians rather than wholly in thrall to dishonest, small-minded charlatans like Katrina Pierson and Ann Coulter. For starters, Republican and conservative leaders would be well advised to encourage the Murdoch brothers' reputed desire to shift Fox News away from its nakedly partisan stance. Their base should not be entirely impervious to the facts.

With all this in mind, the first option would probably be the preferable one from a strategic perspective, as opposed to one simply focused on getting the best result in November. Indeed, the worse the result, the better-- provided the only people left in Congress aren't the crazies in the Freedom Caucus and so forth.

Trump's supporters are the people the establishment have abused and lied to for 30 years in exchange for their votes. There are a number of hateful people in that group yes, but many of them are tired of having their issues ignored. The neoliberal agenda has ruined their lives, just like it has ruined many others and these are the voters that make up a substantial portion of the party, especially in the states that are trending Republican relative to the national average. The Republicans cannot keep tring to impose an Orange County, CA agenda on a Kentucky/MO/Indiana Party.

Jmfcst used to say whoever won his type of voter (high end/Evangelical/Sunbelt) was the nominee of the party. Now, the base GOP voter is a lower middle class guy in the suburbs of St. Louis. These people exist by the millions and in states that offer the paths of least resistance to GOP victory (The South and Midwest), therefore they now have outsized influence in the nominating process.

I will say again, Trump won this nomination when all the establishment candidates jumped on board the open borders band wagon. If you put all your eggs in the wrong basket, don't be surprised if people reject it. Romney was smart, realizing his path to the nomination was to go populist on trade and hard line on immigration. Bush, Rubio and Kasich realized the hard way what Romney calculated in 2007. This is also what I tried to explain to you way back when you were all gaga for Jon Huntsman.

This is the Republican Party. You cannot suppress its current base demographics, or you will end up with another Trump. If you think you can pull that off without consequences just as Jeb Bush tried, than clearly you have learned nothing and forgotten everything from the 2016 cycle.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The next Republican President, will be someone who can connect with that base while remaining palatable to enough other people to win the election. It is a difficult needle to thread, but it is doable and it is the only way.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

keep Trump on the ticket, with candidates for other offices treating him as persona non-grata.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Remember that when the Tea Party was still popular, when even Sarah Palin was popular in Alaska, was when they were going after business and gov't.

The bailouts effectively linked the two together in a way that allowed for a libertarian message about gov't to have a strong populist appeal to many people who felt abandoned out there in middle America. It is basically how you got not just a Republican resurgence but a fiscally conservative GOP resurgence during a period when limit gov't was considered to have been destroyed as viable by the economic collapse.

For a while I thought Rand Paul had potential by staking out this Libertarian-Populist ground and making it a winning argument while also reaching out to minorities and other voters. It was a solid plan on paper, but Paul was not the man to pull it off.

[muon2]

For a while I thought Rand Paul had potential by staking out this Libertarian-Populist ground and making it a winning argument while also reaching out to minorities and other voters. It was a solid plan on paper, but Paul was not the man to pull it off.

The interesting move would be to meld the old populism that built the Trump coalition with the young liberalism of the Bernie base. A candidate who figured that out could be a force in 2020.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Dump Trump and lose the base; otherwise, this will become the norm, and the party will lose whole generations of voters for decades to come.

[Cassius]

So where do people who advocate dumping the Republican base (probably a decent quarter to one third of the American electorate) plan to find the voters necessary to make up for his and create their mythical majority?

It's obviously too late to dump Trump, and efforts by the Republican establishment to do so will simply make the party look even more chaotic and divided in the eyes of the electorate. Perhaps if they had, honestly and in good faith, committed to actually work with Trump once he locked up the nomination (and realistically before then, when he became the only candidate able to win a majority in convention balloting), then perhaps they would have had a much more amicable relationship with Trump and we wouldn't be seeing the campaign dragged down, at least in part, by the toxic relationship they have to him instead.

[Fargobison]

So where do people who advocate dumping the Republican base (probably a decent quarter to one third of the American electorate) plan to find the voters necessary to make up for his and create their mythical majority?

It's obviously too late to dump Trump, and efforts by the Republican establishment to do so will simply make the party look even more chaotic and divided in the eyes of the electorate. Perhaps if they had, honestly and in good faith, committed to actually work with Trump once he locked up the nomination (and realistically before then, when he became the only candidate able to win a majority in convention balloting), then perhaps they would have had a much more amicable relationship with Trump and we wouldn't be seeing the campaign dragged down, at least in part, by the toxic relationship they have to him instead.

The establishment shoved Trump through Cleveland like a wrecking ball leveling any challenger in their way. I think Reince and Co. tried to work things out but Donnie is what he is. There is no changing or molding him into something better.