What's the probability that the GOP pres. nominee is not Bush, Rubio, or Walker?

[Fuzzy Bear]

At this time in 1975, Henry Jackson was considered by many to be the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination.  He was a centrist, hawkish in a party shifting towards dovishness, but a party where the anti-war left was being blamed for the 1972 debacle.  He had some name recognition, was the candidate of labor, of most Jews, of many of the big-city bosses (who still mattered somewhat) and the candidate of the Robert Strauss crowd.  Jackson was considered acceptable to Southerners and labor, and his record on foreign policy was acceptably liberal once you got past the issue of Vietnam (which was over at that point).  Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, was at 1/2 of 1 percent in the polls; he was intriguing in that he was a Deep South Governor who was at least SOMETHING of a national Democrat who was seen as a guy who might take some of the air out of the George Wallace balloon.  In the wings was HHH, who had cancer, but the world didn't know of this yet; there was a whole slew of traditional Democratic constituencies that wished to draft HHH in 1976, labor being the biggest of them all.

Carter won the nomination by shocking the Democratic establishment in Iowa, and convincing enough folks that he had the chops to take on Wallace in the South to win NH with 30% or so of the vote.  After that, Carter convinced Southern blacks to unite behind him and convinced enough Southern white Democrats that he was a Southerner who could carry the South.  By the time Carter got a little momentumn, the establishment didn't know what hit them.

What Carter had going for him was ELECTABILITY.  He got every constituency of the Democratic Party, none of which agreed with him in total, to buy intoo his candidacy because he convinced them of his general election electability.  He truly blindsided lots of liberals who thought he'd do well enough to neutralize Wallace and be a VP candidate.  In the end, he was the guy they were stuck with.  No one really LIKED Carter, but his nomination represented the ultimate in practical politics for the Democrats, who wouldn't have carried the South without Carter, and may not have carried California or Illinois with a  more traditional Democrat.  Carter was NEVER the establishment candidate, but he USED the establishment to buy into his electability pitch.

The 2016 race for the GOP is something like that.  Jeb Bush is kind of the new Scoop Jackson; he's the establishment centrist that the more ideological folks in the party don't like.  On the other hand, all wings of the GOP are hungry for a Presidential win.  Chris Christie was supposed to fill the role of the map-expanding centrist in 2016, but that's all over with now.  But there's a place for someone to play that role.  Right now, it's Rubio; he's kind of the new Jimmy Carter for the GOP, but the guy I think will ultimately emerge is Kasich.  He's got the advantages of a Bush without being a Bush, and he could always pick Rubio as his running mate.  He's a map expander, and at some point, the GOP is going to have to get real with the fact that neither Jeb Bush nor the far-right crowd that are flavors of the month now are going to win a general election against Hillary Clinton.  Kasich is Carter with experience, and he has the most credible electability argument of any Republican.