Your Republican Contender Power Rankings/Probabilities

[bballrox4717]

Tier 1: Front Runner

Jeb Bush: 40 %

Tier 2: Plausible Alternatives to the Front Runner

Marco Rubio: 20 %
Scott Walker: 20 %
Chris Christie: 5 %
John Kasich: 5 %

Tier 3: Tea Party Types That Could Win Despite Lack of Support From Establishment

Ted Cruz: 5%
Rand Paul: 5%

Nobody else running is even going to come close to winning a state, much less the nomination, and honestly I'm probably being generous to Christie, Kasich, Cruz, and Paul. Christie essentially needs to win New Hampshire outright before anyone takes him seriously. Kasich can't compete with Bush the way Walker or Rubio can, and only becomes serious if something titanic takes Bush out of the race before Iowa. Cruz and Paul might win states, but if they're a threat to actually take the nomination the establishment/donors will likely coalesce behind one candidate to prevent this.

It's realistically a three way race between Bush, Rubio, and Walker, and even then, Rubio and Walker are going to need to win Iowa and/or New Hampshire before they truly can become the Bush alternative. If the opposition is still fractured against Bush by the first Super Tuesday, the race is essentially over, because even though the early states are going to frustrate Bush, the primary calendar becomes enormously Bush friendly by March. It also needs to be taken into account that Paul and Cruz are very, very unlikely to drop out if they don't win early states, which can only help Bush.

[bballrox4717]

1.  Jeb Bush 20%
2.  Mike Huckabee 20%
3.  John Kasich 15%
4.  Rand Paul 10%
5.  Marco Rubio 8%
5.  Scott Walker 7%
6.  Ted Cruz 5%
7.  Marco Rubio 5%
8.  Chris Christie 5%
9.  Field 5%

I see the 2016 election as the final battle between the Establishment and Anti-Establishment Republicans as we know it, much as 1976 was.  The GOP cannot keep this battle up and expect to win the Presidency, and I think they know that a resolution is coming.

I believe that, in the end, the race will be between Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee.  Bush is the Establishment's choice (FWIW) and Huckabee is the CLEAR choice of religious conservatives, whose intraparty influence is understated.  There are other constituencies within the GOP who will have to fall in, but I see Jeb Bush as kind of a Gerald Ford and I see Mike Huckabee as kind of a Ronald Reagan (circa 1976, of course).  Ford pulled out all of the stops to win the 1976 nomination, but the GOP of 2016 is a much different party and Jeb isn't an incumbent President.  

On this site, we often discuss the Electoral Map, expanding it, contracting it, etc., but we do this in the context of a few battleground states and assume little change from election to election.  And we ARE in a far more inelastically partisan mode then we were in 1976-1980.  But many people (at the time) viewed the 1976 election as a return to a New Deal normalcy and not an aberration caused by a Democratic nominee from the Deep South who took amorphous positions at times.  Few folks thought REAGAN would sweep the South in 1980 (except for GA), and few folks thought Reagan would sweep the Northeast (except for MD and RI).

I consider Huckabee as the candidate who could perform the difficult feat of sweeping VA, FL, and OH, all states with significant constituencies of Religious Conservatives AND pull off carrying IA, which also has some religious conservatives.  Huckabee is the most Reaganesque candidate in the sense that he offers simple solutions to issues that come off as credible because people know what he believes in; this contrasts with Jeb Bush, whose father and brother have reinvented themselves to obtain public office.  I think that there are enough power brokers who would be expected to fall in with Jeb that will not because they think he can't win, and think that Huckabee might.  A lot of folks thought Ronald Reagan couldn't win, either, even after being nominated.  People don't forget that, either.

Huckabee is part of the establishment wing of the GOP. He'll fall behind Jeb when the time comes. The leader of the conservatives is between Paul, Cruz, and Walker. As for a resolution between the factions, that's not happening anytime soon.

An interesting take.  I have never considered Huckabee an "establishment" Republican, but he's not the economic conservative Walker and Paul are, and he's not the bomb-thrower Cruz is.  He's not the favorite of the establishment (if you want to place him there), but he has a following in the anti-establishment wing of the GOP that includes most religious conservatives.

That's a big plus for Huckabee; he's a Holy Roller that the establishment can trust!  If Huckabee is part of the establishment, that's a plus for him, because Jeb Bush is a guy with nomenclature issues.  He's got a following and he's got a resume, but Jeb Bush is perceived as a general election loser, and not wrongly so. 

If we take "The Map", where will Bush expand it?  FL, and that's a big one, but where else?  I doubt VA, and I doubt OH; Obama Fatigue hasn't caused the voters in these states to say, "Yessiree, ol' G. W. was sure right about that war and those banks!"; they still blame Bush 43 for the debacle.

I think you're off on several points.

As much as I disagree with their assessment, nearly every serious political operative (including the ones running Hillary's campaign) perceive Bush to be the strongest in the general election, and that's not going to change unless Bush starts losing to other Republicans. If voters don't care that he's another Bush (which I think they will), then yeah, Bush could certainly win Obama states and expand the map.

I strongly disagree with both of your assessments of Huckabee. He's not going to raise anything close to the main contenders, which is what sunk him in 2008. Voters are looking for a fresh face, which he isn't. The grassroots? Ted Cruz is a far more eloquent speaker, a much better fundraiser, and much more in tune on economic issues with the base than Huckabee. The odds are stacked too high against him, and if Huckabee is so talented at bridging SoCons with the establishment that none of this matters, then why didn't he win the nomination 2008, when he actually had a shot at winning?

Lastly, 2016 isn't even close to being like 1976. I can't think of a primary race (besides maybe 2000) that's more unlike 2016 than 1976. There was just so much more to it than it simply being establishment/moderate vs anti establishment/conservative. It's just not even in the same universe.