The State of the Republican Race (2016)

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When billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump announced his presidential bid last summer it was greeted with significant skepticism.  After all, Trump was once aligned with Democratic and independent politics before recently casting his lot with the Republican Party, and he was also part of the “birther” faction that doubted the validity of President Obama’s citizenship.  When Trump criticized former Republican presidential nominee John McCain for not being a war hero due to his capture in the Vietnam War, the mainstream media wrote him off as a serious candidate.  However, with just eight months to go before Americans head to the polls to elect the nation’s forty-fifth president Trump is currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.  The Republican “establishment” has recently panicked over Trump’s rise, with the party’s recent presidential nominee Mitt Romney warning party regulars about nominating Trump.  Nevertheless, it appears that if Trump wins the Florida and Ohio primaries in two weeks that he may prove unstoppable and his victory could recast the entire structure of the Republican Party.

This topic brief will highlight where the Republican presidential race currently stands, analyze some scenarios for who could end up as the Republican nominee and its implications, and discuss whether a Trump candidacy could return Republicans to the White House.

Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.

The Republican Race Through “Super Saturday”

With seventeen candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination this year it is not surprising that the party does not have a clear winner in early March.  When the campaign began last summer the conventional wisdom was that it would be a fight between Republicans that were outside of the traditional moderate establishment – Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker – and establishment candidates such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Governor John Kasich.  The entry of Donald Trump into the race in June 2016, one day after Bush announced that he was seeking the office, turned everything upside down, though, as it created a so-called “third lane” of a non-political outsider winning the nomination.  In this camp Trump was joined by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who also enjoyed some early support in the polls due to his criticism of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and his use of the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013 to thrash the idea of political correctness.

The early months saw some very quick flameouts in the race as Walker exited the stage as soon as he appeared after some poor debate performances and some very questionable decisions regarding the allocation of campaign funds.  Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the 2012 presidential contest late at the behest of conservatives who wanted an alternative to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, also dropped out due to some legal issues in Texas (which have now been resolved) and an inability to gain significant traction in the polls.  Three other candidates – Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and former New York Governor George Pataki – all withdrew by the time of the Iowa caucuses after failing to break into the “top tier” of candidates that were given prime time slots for television debates.

As extempers have likely become aware by now, presidential primaries are all about accumulating delegates for the national convention.  The Republican Party lacks the superdelegates of their Democratic counterparts (superdelegates are elected officeholders, elected party leaders, and unelected party elders and these compose 20% of the total delegates at the Democratic National Convention) and as a result the number of delegates to win the Republican nomination is smaller.  A winning candidate must have at least 1,237 delegates by the time the Republican Party hosts its 2016 convention in Cleveland, Ohio (scheduled for July 18-21) if they wish to be named as the party’s standard bearer for the 2016 campaign.  In the past, a field of candidates usually narrows significantly after the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina vote and then Super Tuesday usually paves the way for one candidate to accumulate the necessary delegates unopposed by the time the convention occurs.  The last time that the Republican race did not go this route was in 1976 when insurgent candidate Ronald Reagan battled President Gerald Ford all the way to the Republican convention, where Ford managed to barely squeak by Reagan via a 1187-1070 margin.

The problem of this year’s race is that so many candidates were vying for attention that it was very difficult to immediately narrow the field.  This held out the prospect that a candidate with narrow appeal among a very enthusiastic group of supporters could rack up several early victories and delegates as candidates that shared similar positions split votes from each other.  In the early stages of the race this seemed to occur as Trump won three of the first four states – New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina – partly due to moderate and Tea Party candidates splitting votes.  For example, if one assumes that Rubio, Kasich, and Bush shared voters then their combined total would have been enough to defeat Trump in New Hampshire and South Carolina.  However, due to the fact that all three candidates argued that they had a viable path to the nomination they refused to drop out of the early contests and this allowed Trump to win New Hampshire with 35% of the vote and South Carolina with 33%.  One could even make the argument that a more unified moderate front could have stopped Cruz in Iowa since the Rubio, Kasich, and Bush vote amounted to 28%, the same percentage of votes that Cruz managed to accumulate.

Despite this, the early states did significantly narrow the Republican field before the March 2 “Super Tuesday” primaries, which included contests in thirteen states.  Prior to Super Tuesday, all but five candidates stopped their campaigns.  The most notable were Paul, who dropped out after a poor showing in Iowa; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who stopped his campaign after a poor finish in New Hampshire; and Bush, who decided after South Carolina that it was time to cede the stage to moderate politicians that still had a pathway to success.  Bush’s decision may have also been motivated by his poor showing in South Carolina after using his brother, former President George W. Bush, to campaign for him.  Trump and Cruz could argue after South Carolina that they should go into Super Tuesday because they had actually won state contests, while Rubio used a runner-up finish in South Carolina to argue that he was rehabilitating his campaign after a terrible debate performance before the New Hampshire primary, which caused him to finish fifth.  Kasich justified his decision to stay in on the basis of a runner-up finish in New Hampshire and Carson stuck around for personal reasons.

Super Tuesday’s significance was that it made Trump the immediate frontrunner of the campaign, although Cruz managed to score a few upsets that blunted some of Trump’s momentum.  Trump captured seven states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia), but he lost Oklahoma to Cruz despite polls showing him ahead.  Cruz had to win Texas in order to survive because it would be a difficult argument for a candidate to keep going if they failed to win their home state.  Cruz won Texas convincingly, capturing 44% of the vote to Trump’s 27%, and reinforced the argument that Republicans should unite around his campaign because he was the only candidate that has proven that they could beat Donald Trump.  Rubio finally ended his skid of losses by winning the Minnesota caucus, but that event was poorly attended and it did not give a significant boost to his campaign.  Rubio had hoped to score a big win in Virginia, but Trump defeated him by 3%.  RealClearPolitics argues on March 2 that Rubio’s loss could be attributed to Kasich also contesting the state, as Kasich pulled 96,000 voters in a fourth place finish could have put Rubio over Trump.  A poor Super Tuesday performance did cause Carson to finally exit the race, with the The Washington Post explaining on March 2 that he saw no path to victory, but Kasich said that he would stay in until at least Ohio, saying that his true support is in the Midwest, which will hold its primaries in future weeks.

Last week’s “Super Saturday” featured contests in Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, and Kansas.  Trump was favored in all of these races, but the results seem to indicate that the Republican Party’s recent “stop Trump” movement is gaining momentum (more on this later in the brief).  Trump took a beating in the March 3 Republican presidential debate in Detroit, with Cruz and Rubio attacking him on his past political support for Democrats (including Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton), legal controversy surrounding his failed Trump University enterprise, and reports that Trump is not genuine about some of the issues that he alleges to support.  Cruz scored upsets in Maine and Kansas, although it should be noted that these were caucus states and his campaign has been better in caucuses than primaries, and came very close to winning Kentucky and Louisiana.  Former two-time NSDA United States Extemp National Champion James Hohmann writes in The Washington Post on March 6 that late deciders in Louisiana broke heavily for Cruz, nearly leaving the media with egg on its face after they declared the state early for Trump due to early vote totals that had him well ahead.  The Washington Post in a separate article on March 6 notes that Rubio’s campaign endured a “Saturday Night Massacre” after Cruz displaced him as a runner-up in every state.  Rubio did win Sunday’s Puerto Rico primary with 75% of the vote, but this has not given his campaign an immediate boost in the polls.  According to some insiders, Rubio’s combative attitude with Trump at the March 3 debate, which included insulting Trump’s manhood, turned off donors and some former supporters and it may have doomed his campaign over the long-term.

The “Stop Trump” Movement & Its Difficulties

Heading into Tuesday’s contests in Hawaii (caucus), Idaho (primary), Michigan (primary), and Mississippi (primary) – all of which took place after the writing of this brief – Trump leads the Republican delegate race.  According to estimate, Trump has 384 delegates to Cruz’s 300.  Rubio is in third with 151 delegates and Kasich has 37.  What changes some of the delegate math going forward is that starting on March 15 states can award their delegates on a “winner take all” basis.  This matters because two of rich prizes in the GOP calendar (and in the 2016 general election) – Florida (ninety-nine delegates) and Ohio (sixty-six delegates) – are winner take all.  USA Today explains on March 6 that Rubio and Kasich are staying in the race in order to win these two states, which they hope to then use and present a case that they can win the nomination.  The problem is that the delegate math just does not add up for them with the remaining states.  However, what wins in those states could do is thwart Trump’s ability to win a majority of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination in Cleveland.  According to NBC News on March 4, the Florida and Ohio contests will determine whether the Republican Party has a contested nominating convention this summer.  They note that if Trump were to win Florida and Ohio he would knock Rubio and Kasich out of the race and would make it so that he would only have to win 50% of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination, something that is entirely viable if he is left with just facing off with Cruz.  However, if Trump were to lose both states then he would need 66% of the remaining delegates and this would be hard to achieve in a crowded field.

The Republican hierarchy has made it very clear that they do not want Trump as their nominee. They are suspicious of his support for continuing to fund Planned Parenthood (aside from its abortion services), his past support for Democrats, his angry rhetoric on immigration and pledges to deport eleven million illegal immigrants during his term, and his gaffe last week in failing to immediate condemn David Duke, a noted white supremacist in the United States.  The Economist reports on March 5 that Republican leaders fear that Trump could lead the Republican Party into a new ideological direction that stands for foreign policy isolationism, economic protectionism, and white nationalism and this could make the party a minority party for decades.  In some ways it appears that Republican opposition to Trump is taking over the party’s desire to even win the presidential race as the “stop Trump” movement has turned debates into shouting matches between the remaining candidates (excluding Kasich).  Last week, Romney held a press conference and according to The Hill on March 3, called Trump a “phony” and a “fraud.”  Romney urged Republican voters to side with candidates that have the best chance of defeating Trump in their state.  This would deny Trump a majority of the delegates and create a contested convention.  Trump would be at a disadvantage here because after the first ballot state party leaders could try to corral votes and shift them towards a moderate ticket that the GOP leaders would think guarantees the best chance at victory against Hillary Clinton.  Some have even speculated that Romney is positioning himself as a compromise candidate, but the problem with this argument is that the GOP’s Tea Party wing never liked Romney and there is evidence that evangelical voters did not show up for him in the last presidential election.  Trump noted this in his rebuttal to Romney’s press conference, saying that Romney was a loser who had no right to influence the race.  Trump added that Romney met with Jeb Bush prior to the presidential campaign and was dissuaded from joining in.  According to Trump, if Romney was scared of Bush, who mounted a very poor effort this cycle, he is not fit to lead the party in 2016.

One of the big dangers facing the GOP is that if they were to deny the nomination to Trump despite the billionaire winning more states and more popular votes than any other candidate his supporters, who have been shown to be extremely loyal, may bolt the party and support a Trump third party bid.  Although Trump signed a pledge last year saying that he would not follow this course of action, he left himself some leeway by saying that he would only live up to it if the Republican Party “treated him fairly.”  Trump could use Romney’s press conference and the spending now launched against him as evidence that the GOP has not been fair.  If he were to run third party it would likely result in a Democratic victory, although some GOP moderates have warned that they may nominate a third party candidate if Trump wins the nomination anyway.  Party moderates hold that this is what is needed to prevent the party from losing the House and its Senate majority, which could take place if a fractured party drives votes into the Democratic camp or discourages rank-and-file Republicans from turning out to vote.

Another big problem with any type of anti-Trump movement is that more moderate candidates with significant experience are not favored by Republican primary voters this cycle.  While one could dismiss Bush’s failures as the country not desiring a third Bush presidency in thirty years, voters have rejected picks that they may have backed in prior cycles such as Rubio or Kasich.  The Economist explains on March 6 that Rubio was supposed to be the chosen darling for this cycle, but he has lost Tea Party backing due to his support for immigration reform and more moderate voters appear alienated by some of his backtracking from previous positions to counter Trump and Cruz.  Democratic strategist Paul Begala has taken to saying of Rubio that “Everybody likes him but the voters.”  If Trump were to be defeated before the convention, Cruz appears to be the only one that could feasibly do it but he is hated by many party moderates just as much as Trump.  The Orange County Register writes on March 6 that Cruz has a good ground game, but moderates dislike his criticism of neoconservative foreign policy positions and deem his rhetoric on social issues and immigration as too toxic to win a general election.  Fortune echoes this claims on March 6 when it says that Cruz has significant detractors in the party based on his support for “carpet bombing” ISIS positions in the Middle East, dismantling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and his outburst at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he called a “liar.”  So it seems that if the GOP wants to stop Trump that they will need to do so in Florida and Ohio next week because unifying around Cruz does not appear feasible.

Would a Trump Candidacy Fail?

With Trump as the current frontrunner extempers need to start contemplating how a Trump candidacy would play out.  There are two scenarios that one could follow.  One sees Trump as a transformational figure that is able to assemble a winning coalition like other outsiders such as General Andrew Jackson in the 1820s, military hero and New York progressive Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, and California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1980 (and Democrats once thought they would have an easy time defeating Reagan because he was too conservative and was “just a former Hollywood actor”).  However, there is another scenario that horrifies Republicans:  Barry Goldwater in 1964.  In that year, Goldwater defeated moderate New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller for the party’s nomination.  Many moderate Republicans refused to back Goldwater in the general election, which included Romney’s father George, who was the governor of Michigan at the time.  This divisiveness tore the GOP apart and Goldwater’s open discussion about the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, his advocacy for ending New Deal legacies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Social Security, and his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds produced a slaughter in the Electoral College and in congressional races.  These losses allowed Johnson to push more liberal policies over the next two years that became elements of the American welfare state and the Great Society, including Medicaid, Medicare, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  The one prominent Republican that campaigned for Goldwater was Richard Nixon, who then leveraged that into winning the Republican nomination four years later.

For supporters, a Trump candidacy offers new possibilities to the GOP.  They note that his campaign has given the race valuable energy and brought out more voters in Republican caucuses and primaries over 2012 levels and more than what the Democrats have managed this year.  However, Trump has yet to break 50% in any primary, showing that some of the turnout might be driven as much by an anti-Trump vote than people wanting to vote for Trump.  In a general election there is the fear that some Republican moderates will refuse to cast a ballot for him.  It is possible that the drive to capture the White House and a desire to defeat Hillary Clinton, a long-time “boogeywoman” of conservatives, could “trump” fears about Trump’s ideological purity, but if Republican voters chose not to turnout for Trump in large numbers or cast their ballots for Clinton as a moderate alternative then Trump would lose in a landslide.  The New York Times explains on March 6 that Trump could peel off blue-collar voters from Democrats, but these voters are a shrinking part of the electorate and Trump could lose Republican voters in richer suburbs that have long constituted the party’s moderate core.  Furthermore, Trump still polls poorly among women, especially single women, and this gender gap could be exploited by Clinton in a general election.  This could really hurt Trump because women vote more often than men in presidential contests (and even some congressional elections) and the possibility of electing the first female president could dent Trump’s electoral hopes.

Another argument is that Trump could put states in the Rust Belt such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in play.  Since Trump considers New York to be his home state, some Republican commentators even speculate that a surge for him there could threaten the Senate seat of soon-to-be Minority Leader Charles Schumer.  If the Republicans could break into Democratic territory they could greatly alter the Democrats electoral math heading into 2016.  President Obama largely put Republicans on the defensive in his two presidential races, capturing prior Republican states such as Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado.  President Obama also came very close to capturing Arizona from John McCain in 2008.  The thought of Trump winning Rust Belt states is appealing, but if his rhetoric alienates Latino and African American voters in large numbers he could lose other states that Republicans have won in the past such as Georgia, Arizona, and Florida.  Models that suggest Trump could win in the Electoral College still give him these states, but losing some traditionally Republican states and trading them out with a few “blue” states does not put Trump any closer to the presidency.

Finally, the big fear of a Trump candidacy is that it could cost the Republicans the House and the Senate.  While the GOP has gerrymandered its House majority to exist until at least 2020, if Trump went down in flames in general election it could depress Republican turnout and hurt candidates.  Also, the GOP has vulnerable Senate candidates in swing states such as Florida and New Hampshire.  Trump could have negative coattails on these candidates and produce significant losses.  This would be the inverse of the 2008 election when President Obama provided a boost for Democratic candidates in states such as Minnesota, Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Oregon.  Control of the Senate matters a great deal for Republicans because even if they lose the White House, preserving their Senate majority would allow them to decide the direction of the Supreme Court since it appears unlikely that a replacement to Antonin Scalia will be confirmed until after the election.  The anxiety about a Trump candidacy is what drives the party’s leadership to oppose him as they fear a complete wipeout at the polls if Trump is the nominee.

What makes Trump’s candidacy such a major event is that he is a wild card.  When one looks beyond Trump’s rhetoric about the border, his positions on trade, the welfare state, and abortion are to the left of the traditional Republican mainstream.  The GOP establishment may not want Trump as their nominee, but he continues to lead the pack while other candidates are falling by the wayside and if he performs well next Tuesday, the GOP may have to swallow a Trump candidacy as their best chance to retake the White House in 2016.

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