A Canadian observer here...
This will be a relatively quick myTake by my standards, but i just had to point out something I and many others have been observing in American politics today. You can't turn on the news over the last few weeks without seeing at least a mention of what crazy ass shit some republican (usually Donald Trump) said. Now, i follow American politics closely...even closer than i do the politics in my own country sometimes...largely because you can't get by in this world if you don't know what's going on at the political level of the single biggest superpower the world has ever seen, especially if you're a person interested in investing money in asset classes like stocks as bonds as I am. So I've been looking at this republican campaigning process very closely. Watched most of the debates so far to their entirety, and I've been following the developments on the left as well, with Hilary Clinton slowly but surely getting curbstomped by Bernie Sanders. My conclusion? The republicans have zero chance of winning in 2016, barring one caveat which i'll get into later.
So why do I think republicans like Donald Trump, despite all his popularity at the moment as an outsider candidate, has zero chance of winning in 2016? Well it comes down to one simple thing: If you are a republican running for office today, particularly the office of president of the USA, you have to make an important choice. You have to choose whether or not you want to win the republican primary, or if you want to win the general election...because you sure as hell aren't winning both. Of coarse, that's a bit of a catch 22 since you sort of need to win the primary to even have a chance at winning the general election as a republican...but that's really my point. Why do I say this? Well its come to my, and a lot of observers attention that in order to win a republican primary in 2016, you need to say the most batshit crazy, degenerate, retarded and downright wrong things in order to get the panties wet of a sizeable number of your constiuency, and then somehow like magic, you need to unwind all of that crazy and convince democrats and independents (which combine pretty much make up the majority of the people one needs to appeal to in order to win) that you aren't a lunatic. The result of that is an almost guaranteed victory for the party who comes out with even the most luke warm of candidates in my view.
Still not convinced? Well then, lets rewind back to what happened in 2012. As most of us know, Obama had a fairly resounding victory against Mitt Romney in the 2012 election cycle. What a lot of people are unaware of though is that Obama made history yet again when he won a second time, but this time it had nothing to do with the color of his skin. In 2012, Obama was the first president since FDR to win re-election with unemployment as high as it was at the time.
Now tell me this...how does someone who's approval ratings at the time were less than stellar, whos very name had become a symbol of hatred and division, with the unemployment rate so ridiculously high for a one term president? People....understand that Obama did not win again because he was so great. That much should be obvious. He won again because the Republicans were so bad. This is the fundamental lesson one should take from what happened in 2012. Romney was a terrible choice by the republicans because he said things that were completely unfavourable to the changing American demographics. Well actually, he probably wasn't a terrible choice. As bad as he was, he was probably the least bad of what the republicans had to offer at the time. He and the other republicans were much too anti-poor, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-sanity when it came to foreign policy to appeal to democrats and especially to independents, who sorry to say Republicans, make up the remaining majority of people that you need to convince of your compotency to lead in order to become president. Republican candidates continue to fail to acknowledge/understand the changing demographics of the country they live in. You can't win by being a super religous zealot/war monger anymore.
So now that we've taken a trip down memory lane, lets fast forward to what we have today. Today, unemployment in the USA is even lower than what it was when Obama made history again in 2012, and instead of being more moderate, the republicans have by and large become even more crazy than they were in 2012.
If you are an American, and if you aren't familiar with how things are in the rest of the world, the republicans may not seem all that crazy to you. But ask a good number of outside observers what they see when they look at the republicans, even the conservative observers, and you'll find that many will be almost totally turned off by the republican candidates, all but one usually...and that sort of leads into the one caveat i mentioned at the beginning of all this. I was watching the second republican debate a day or so ago, particularly Rand Paul's performance, and I remember after hearing his response to a stupid attack Trump made towards him thinking "jeeze and lord mercy....Rand is way too smart to win a republican primary." The guy was talking about trumps "non-sequetors" while you had the rest of them saying the most moronic things I've seen from presidential hopefuls in a long time.
Now again, this is my personal opinion, but of all the republican candidates, Rand Paul is the only one who would have a real chance at beating someone like Hilary Clinton or even Bernie Sanders. He's the only person I've seen from the republican side who is consistently correct (well, a better word would be sane) on issues like foreign policy, big government and the unfortunate war on drugs. He has a fairly populist message, but unfortunately, he is too well nuanced to be taken as seriously as i think he should be by a lot of republican voters. Make no mistake though, I believe even he has a bit of crazy in him, but i do think he's the best republicans have to offer. However, it seems like republican voters are by and large looking not only for the most outsider candidate, but also the least nuanced ones....the ones who paint things (like planned parenthood) and groups of people (like mexicans and muslims) with the broadest brush possible. Because Rand Paul isn't like that, he polls at 1% in most polls I've seen. Ironically, I think he'd do better running as a democrat than he would as a republican, but i digress.
So I'll conclude by saying this: To the people on here reading this, the Americans and non-Americans alike who seem super worried about people like Donald Trump becoming the next president of the largest superpower this world has ever seen...learn to rest easy, as I do. 2012 has taught me one thing...that is, when republicans go too far right, too crazy, democrats make history. Obama did it in 2012 by being the first president since FDR to win re election with unemployment so high. If Hilary is the democrat nominee, she will do it too by being the first woman elected as president of the USA (despite how bad of candidate I personally think she is) or if he is the nominee, Bernie Sanders will do it by being the most extreme socialist to win the general election without an economic catastrophe like the Great Depression/Recession in the backdrop. Take a look at the platform Bush ran on in the early 2000's. As much as he is hated today, he didn't run on a platform as far right as the republicans routinely do today. Think about it. So at the end of the day, I'm not worried at all about my country will be next door neighbours to a country being led by a loon who would blow up the middle east and send oil prices to $150/barrel. It's just not going to happen, barring some cataclismic event...and I'm fairly confident in saying this.
Cheers,
Watermelonoma
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