Is American Conservatism a "hollowed-out ideological shell"?

[uti2]

Sure, most of it (and the primary question asked), but I disagree that Trump was the best they had and that the others would have been creamed. Perhaps by a version of Hillary Clinton without the email scandal (and the subsequent fbi investigation and Comey stuff), but that's not what version we got. All that scandal/drama, and all the other smaller issues she had really does add up and really did hurt her numbers. Far less offensive Republican candidates who, bland as they may be, probably would have been well-positioned to defeat her. To say otherwise seems like an endorsement of the idea that all that drama and scandal didn't really matter, which I vehemently disagree with.

Comey only went public on the investigation upon seeing a forged Russian document in May after the Russians had deployed their propaganda campaign following Trump winning the GOP nomination.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/index.html

The Russians were specifically courting Trump campaign officials in April, before Trump had even won the nomination:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/us/politics/trump-russia-mueller-indictment.html?smid=tw-nytpolitics&smtyp=cur

Bush Sr. had the iran-contra drama, Ollie North was indicted in July 1988.

Dukakis quite literally was up over Bush Sr. by double digits in early polling and had a net favorables margin of 67-10.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/05/27/dukakis-takes-early-lead-over-bush/0ed5eed4-7b0e-44e4-8c13-6adff6603e82/

Favorability numbers are not fixed, they change over the course of campaigning. Being disliked is generally just an indictator of how well-known you are.

Obama was more ostensibly disliked than Mccain and Romney. Same goes for GWB v. Kerry & even Reagan vs. Carter & Mondale.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-most-hated-candidate-usually-wins/article/2590520


This article is also actually from December 18, 1987:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,145687,00.html

"Dukakis and Paul Simon are the only two with relatively low negatives"

Dukakis had amongst the lowest unfavorables in the entire Democratic field in terms of early favorables.

[uti2]

wrong, Rubio or another neocon would have won like you would never have seen.

Republicans need to go back to 2004 if we're going to win anything.

Because the GOP base is very enthused by Bush, Mccain & Flake? People who get booed at the very mention of their names?

http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-mention-of-john-mccain-george-w-bush-1508564499-htmlstory.html

People loved 'Neocons' so much that hillary who ran her entire GE campaign as a 'neocon' courting republicans and lost on that platform?

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/clinton-touts-endorsement-from-pro-torture-neocons.html

Also another Pro-Tip, Bush didn't run as a Neocon in 2000.

[uti2]

I feel like this description is still too generous.

This.

Makes me laugh that people actually think Hillary would've lost to the others

Kasich would have landslided Hillary , and Rubio would have beaten her as well

Rubio/Cruz aren't that different besides some superficial traits. All of those traits would be attacked.

He doesn't have any actual moderating policies of note when you look beyond the superficialities.
His policies for the most part are the same as Cruz, so electorally he'd functionally end up as equivalent to Cruz following the facade breaking down.

[uti2]

I feel like this description is still too generous.

This.

Makes me laugh that people actually think Hillary would've lost to the others

Kasich would have landslided Hillary , and Rubio would have beaten her as well

Rubio/Cruz aren't that different besides some superficial traits. All of those traits would be attacked.

He doesn't have any actual moderating policies of note when you look beyond the superficialities.
His policies for the most part are the same as Cruz, so electorally he'd functionally end up as equivalent to Cruz following the facade breaking down.

Rubio supports Immigration Reform , Cruz does not


Rubio also didnt propose a flat tax like cruz did

Rubio wanted 0% tax rates on capital gains/dividends. So basically you're saying immigration? Bill Clinton easily won hispanics while campaigning against illegal immigration in the 90s. It's not a left/right issue.

[uti2]

I feel like this description is still too generous.

This.

Makes me laugh that people actually think Hillary would've lost to the others

Kasich would have landslided Hillary , and Rubio would have beaten her as well

Rubio/Cruz aren't that different besides some superficial traits. All of those traits would be attacked.

He doesn't have any actual moderating policies of note when you look beyond the superficialities.
His policies for the most part are the same as Cruz, so electorally he'd functionally end up as equivalent to Cruz following the facade breaking down.

Rubio supports Immigration Reform , Cruz does not


Rubio also didnt propose a flat tax like cruz did

Rubio wanted 0% tax rates on capital gains/dividends. So basically you're saying immigration? Bill Clinton easily won hispanics while campaigning against illegal immigration in the 90s. It's not a left/right issue.

W Bush also supported eliminating tax rates on dividends : http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/us/bush-budget-plan-would-eliminate-tax-on-dividends.html

Marco Rubio is George W Bush 2.0 not Ted Cruz 2.0

Jeb and Kasich were Bush 2.0. Rubio was closer to Cruz than Bush. He attacked Kasich for expanding medicare, when that's what Bush did.

Capital Gains =/ Dividends. High Net Worth individuals/Wealthy CEOs earn almost all of their entire income from Capital Gains, they would be taxed at zero.

[uti2]

2010 John Kasich, who was a fiscal hawk and had an A rating from immigration restrictionists NumbersUSA, might well have won the primary and the general election.

But after Kasich got burned in 2011 on the referendums on his version of the WI stuff, Kasich basically did what Arnold Schwartzenegger did after he got likewise burned in 2005 on the initiatives in California. He moved to the center, but not just any center. He moved to the center, by which I mean center that is what his John McCain acolyte consultant shills told him.

Kasich would not have got the Trump base, because Kasich supports open borders and unilateral free trade in the face of a protectionist China. Kasich would not have campaigned on a trillion dollars of infrastructure, the wall or renegotiating NAFTA.


And there is no such thing as "The Jeb Bush Coalition". There is no Bush coalition out there waiting for right Republican to carry it to victory. It doesn't exist. The Bush "coalition" is now buried under thousands of pissed off Millenials in NOVA, who hate the Republicans not because of Trump (though they certainly hate Trump), but because of W's elective war in the Middle East.

There is no path to victory for an outright neocon and a big part of Trump's ability to rally  higher percentages of the WWC vote was because he ran against the Iraq War and talked endlessly of the wars diverting money from Infrastructure. This is a common mindset among that kind of secular, blue collar alienated worker, whose industry has gone, particular those who were alive during the Vietnam War, that went heavily for Trump in PA, NE OH And MI. Many of these same voters went to the Democrats in 2006 when Pelosi promised to set a time table, raise the minimum wage and "drain the swamp". That was not a message aimed at San Francisco, it was a message aimed at these same voters.

At lot of these same people also voted for Reagan. Not the Reagan that promised a free trade zone from Alaska to Argentina, but the Reagan that put quotas on Japanese cars, pulled out of Lebanon to avoid a protracted conflict that wasn't in our interest and ended the stagflation in the economy.

Republican intellectuals, and conservative ideologues have tried to pretend that these people don't exist and have also white washed out of existence the inconvenient Reagan policies and positions that appealed to them. They continued to do this, even as their numbers ballooned in the GOP because of campaigns by Bush and others, as well as the unpopularity of the Democrats and their policies on coal, climate and immigration, while their preferred base slowly declined due to generational change and in-migration of diverse groups who mostly vote Democratic and have even less interest in those policies, no matter how favorable a face you you put on the immigration policy.

Kasich doenst need those exact voters to win Wisconsin(Scott Walker won there three times) or Pennsylvania as his suburban performance would be the best the GOP has done since 1988.


Kasich won those blue collar dem voters easily in (just look at the county by county map) in 2014 and he likely would do so again in 2014 .


Also if someone like Kasich won the nomination,  Jill Stein would do much much better than she did in OTL and she could possibly surpass Nader 2000 performance as the best the green party ever did.

1. Tommy Thompson also won in 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1998, but that didn't make it go for Bush 41 or 43. "Best suburban performance since 1988"? No Republican has won all four Philly suburban counties since Arlen Specter in 2004, and he is dead. Tom Corbett couldn't even get Montco and Delco in 2010 and he freakin won Allegheny Count outright. The key thing you are forgetting is, those suburbs were lost on generational change and defections on the abortion issue. Kasich is very conservative on that issue and that would be been the focus of the Democratic strategy in SE PA.

2. Maps and percentages can be misleading. Kasich got just 60,000 more votes than he did when he barely edged a win in 2010. The Democrats lost 800,000 votes. Kasich didn't flip many votes, the vast majority stayed home. I will say again, 2014 had the lowest turnout since 1942, remember that caveat always when citing 2014 data.

Mahoning County:
2014:
John Kasich   Mary Taylor   Republican   35,578   53.68%
Edward FitzGerald   Sharen Swartz Neuhardt   Democratic   28,376   42.81%

2010:
Ted Strickland   Yvette McGee Brown   Democratic   56,228   65.76%
John Kasich   Mary Taylor   Republican   26,566   31.07%

Kasich +9,000   Dems - 28,000 If turnout was the same. this county would have voted 57% Dem 43% Kasich or thereabouts. It voted 53% Kasich, because 20,000 voters just disappeared.

2016 Presidential
Hillary Clinton   Timothy Kaine   Democratic   57,381   49.48%
Donald J. Trump   Michael R. Pence   Republican   53,616   46.23%

2012 Presidential
Barack H. Obama   Joseph R. Biden, Jr.   Democratic   77,059   63.38%
Willard Mitt Romney   Paul Ryan   Republican   42,641   35.07%

By comparison, there was about a 7,000 vote decline between 2012 and 2016, when you account for 2,000 more Gary Johnson votes. Trump gained 11,000 over Romney and Clinton lost 20,000 votes. Trump got 20,000 more votes than Kasich in 2014 and almost 30,000 votes more than Kasich in 2010.

You also forget PVI , Kasich was leading Hillary by 8-10 in the polls whenever they matched up.


The question is what would Hillary attack Kasich on to make up for that polling deficit :


- Lehmen Brothers(For Which Kasich can attack Hillary for Goldman Sachs)

- His position on  Abortion( He opposed the Heartbeat bill , and supported a 20-24 week abortion ban which is supported by most Americans)

- His economic policies(Which would not work like they would on Rubio and Cruz as Kasich as a good economic record as the governor of Ohio).

- His support of NAFTA and the TPP(Which Kasich can point out Bill signed NAFTA and Hillary called TPP the gold standard)

- His position on Iraq(which is nearly identical to Hillary's )


on the other Hand Hillary would not be able to get away from these problems:

- The Email Scandal

- The Democratic party base not being enthusiastic enough to vote for Hillary while the GOP base would still be enthusiastic to vote Kasich as they hated Hillary that much. On the other hand Kasich would not come up across like Trump was in OTL which means much of the base stays home or voters for Stein.

- Kasich being much more popular than her among independents  


- Her being a bad campaigner in general

There was no inherent Bush coalition. Bush barely won in 2000 by moderating to try and pick off certain voters at the margins of the Clinton coalition. This is also what Bentsen might've done in '88, and what Kasich might've done in 2016, but it would not have been a landslide. Bentsen still wouldn't have won by a landslide.

Many of the weaknesses you mention also apply to Gore (replace email scandal w/ Lewinsky) and Bush Sr. in '88 (with the iran-contra investigation, Ollie North was indicted in the summer of 1988 and this investigation continued until 1993).

Rubio/Cruz were doubling down on the Tea Party platform that forced Romney to the right while pushing their own platforms even further to the right, similar to the way Dukakis/Dewey doubled down on Mondale/Willkie.