The Hill: Trump #1, Rand Paul done.

augustgraphic3The beltway newspaper “The Hill” is noting today that Hulk Hogan’s favorite Candidate Donald Trump is on top of the GOP in their rankings …at the same time that they’re saying you can stick a fork in Rand Paul, because he’s done.

10. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (July ranking: 6)

A candidate who attracted considerable media attention, particularly in the early days of his bid, Paul has drifted gradually downward in the polls.

The bad news: There is no strong reason to believe he can reverse his decline. The RCP averages have Paul 10th nationally, ninth in Iowa, ninth in New Hampshire and a dismal 12th in South Carolina. Paul is a known quantity and GOP voters simply aren’t buying what he’s selling.

Read it all here.

Is it about time that we start shedding some people in this race, so we can get down to business?

25 thoughts on “The Hill: Trump #1, Rand Paul done.”

  1. Didn’t this website predict Trump’s demise after Trump counter-attacked McCain? How can this be explained?

    1. Making up stories about the future is less work than keeping track of what’s happening in the present.

      Agenda-driven journalists on both the left and the right continue to push the narrative that Paul is about to quit the race, completely ignoring the fact that he’s spent most of the last two weeks laying a foundation for his ground game in the March caucus states.

    2. Most likely but Trump is entertaining. He has completely shaken up the race.

      I predict Ben Carson will be the GOP nominee at the end of the primary.

  2. I read an article that gave one reason for the number of GOP candidates in the race this year. The establishment pick, Bush, was known not to be able to win unless they could dilute the number of people against him percentage-wise, and for each new candidate in the race, Bush’s numbers stayed the same while the other candidates split the remaining voters, thereby allowing Bush to win a primary with only 25% of the primary vote in the key states. Actually it sounded pretty plausible to me. But then enter Trump who upset the well-planned apple cart. The establishment desperately wants to continue their power and wants Bush as the candidate, and this apparently was one of their strategies. This just sounds like politics as usual and is not that unbelieveable and is the reason that Trump is surging! We have our Trump hats for the state fair and this is going to be fun!!

    1. I have my trump hat too, i’m using it to stay in my chair right now, else i’d slide out

  3. Springer,

    The problem with that conspiracy theory is it presumes the candidates will cooperate in such a conspiracy and the voters in primaries are idiots (support a candidate who wasn’t in it to win). Which of these candidates do you think would do such a thing? And, if there was such a conspiracy, you’d see money flowing to the candidates?

    Any candidate who has a stategy that depends on winning with less than 50% of the delegates is a crazy strategy. Voters wouldn’t cooperate.

    Trump hasn’t upset the apple cart of Bush. He has upset the apple cart of everyone who hoped to become viable but Trump has absorbed all the oxygen preventing them from going anywhere, sapped wind out of Paul, Walker, and to some degree Cruz. These non-Bush candidates have also been hurt by Fiorina and Carson (who with Trump are roughly 40% of the current support).

    If you were to break the campaign into tiers (based on average of last four national polls @ realclearpolitics.com:

    1) Trump: 26%
    2) Carson (11%) & Bush (10%): 21%
    3) Cruz (7%), Walker (7%), Rubio (6%), Fiorina (5%), Kasich (5%): 30%
    4) All other candidates & undecided: 23%

    To Pat’s question at the top, I don’t see any of those listed above dropping out before Iowa, unless one of them has some bad debate performances or some other mistake. When the other’s drop out, I don’t expect them to materially shift the positions by themselves. However, there can still be jockeying among the Top 8 based on how message is received and the issues of the day.

    I’ve said for months there is more important information than the horse race:

    1) Net Favorable (Favorable minus Unfavorable): Candidates who have a low ratio have gotten wherever they are by gaining friends and losing friends close to equally. Unless they change their message, they reach a ceiling quickly. Because I’m only considering the top 8 as currently viable.

    Those above 50%: Rubio +69%, Carson +56%
    Between 40% and 50%: Walker (47%), Bush (42%), Fiorina (41%, Cruz (41%)
    Below 40%: Kasich +31%, Trump +29%

    2) Name ID: A candidate with low name ID can move up on the polls easier than someone with extremely high name ID. This is usually measured when asked whether they have favorable or unfavorable impression and answer “Haven’t heard enough” which means they have have upside if they can get their Name ID out:

    Those above 35% where voters haven’t heard enough yet to make a favorable/unfavorable opinion: Kasich (58%), Fiorina (44%), Walker (43%).

    Below 25%: Bush (24%) and Trump (9%).

    3) Organization on the ground. Right now subjectively, only Bush, Cruz, Rubio & Walker have real organization prepared to go beyond Iowa & NH.

    Springer, essentially Bush and Trump have the same problem but Trump has it worse.

    While Bush & Trump are tied with regard to favorable (59%), they trail Rubio (72%) & Carson (62%). However, Trump’s unfavorable is almost double Bush’s (30% to 17%) and more importantly the unfavorables of Rubio, Carson, Walker, Fiorina & Kasich only TOTALS 27%.

    Trump’s upside is even less because only 9% haven’t heard enough about him. The next closest is Bush at 24%.

    This next debate has become critical for two candidates for sure.

    1) Trump has to reduce his unfavorable other wise as candidates drop out, they are more likely to drift to candidates they have become more aware of or as an “anti-Trump” move ala Howard Dean. I think this requires him to tone down his rhetoric.

    2) Bush has appeal to the 24% who haven’t heard enough about him. I think he has seemed “blah” so far. Opposite of Trump, he has to turn up his rhetoric and show some passion.

    Because I think there will be a further narrowing to a top 5, Kasich (58% “haven’t heart enough), Fiorina (44%), & Walker (43%) have to use national debates to move people into their favorable camp. If these three were to move half the people who “haven’t heard enough” into favorables, the stand as follows: Walker (73%), Fiorina (71%), and Kasich (65%), Otherwise, they just run out of steam which will leave the following with the highest favorable for going into the post New Hampshire campaigns:

    Favorable Ratings most likely to make the top 5 (you can’t get primary votes without a favorable impression: Rubio (72%), Carson (62%), Bush & Trump (59%), Cruz (54%).

    1. I don’t think voters are idiots (well, not all of them!), but I do think they are swayed by soundbites and the way the media presents the candidates views and stories. And I firmly believe that the GOP establishment has a favorite son and will do all in their power to promote that candidate into a winning position in the primaries, by hook or crook as they say. I don’t know if I buy into the article I read, but it does seem plausible. Last time around there were many voters who clearly didn’t want Romney as their candidate, but the establishment did, and they won out, in the primary at least. Same thing happened with McCain. And both lost, even though they probably had high favorability ratings. It’s time we try someone who is not a political animal, who is a clear leader and is outside the beltway of DC, who has different ideas, who is not bound by the same lobbyists and money interests, who is not politically correct, and who will not go along to get along.

  4. John Kasich is my man! Glad to see others starting to realize his leadership, experience, and good morals. I think we’ll see more polls show this trend in the next couple of months.

    I too would like to see the bottom tier candidates start to drop off to give the voters a little better picture of who our top candidates are going to be in the long run.

    1. i like kasich. i like walker. if both of these gentlemen don’t turn up the heat and bring home to us how their success as governors gets us a great strong america, they won’t just fail the republican party, they’ll fail every man and woman on this continent. that’s whats at stake here. they’ve got to tell us all that trump only gets the nation halfway down the road and detail what else must go with that from experienced leaders like themselves.

      1. yeah, i guess jeb could join in on that ‘turn up the heat’ thing too if he felt so moved. *yawn* at times like this i have to remember that at this time in 2007 mccain had not even a snowball’s chance in hell of being the nominee, according to polling and conventional wisdom.

  5. Trump is the leader of the GOP. Why?

    1. The greatest number of Republicans want to deport Mexicans.

    2. The greatest number of Republicans want to bomb Iran back into Paleozoic era (or back to 6,000 years ago if you are a Republican who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old).

    3. The greatest number of Republicans want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “terrific.”

    4. The greatest number of Republicans want us to get China – our greatest creditor and supplier of the cheap junk they buy at Wal-Mart.

    That is the simple reality why Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.

    1. 1. the greatest number of republicans are disgusted that the federal government has adopted a hands off policy on immigration enforcement since reagan’s conditional amnesty in the 80’s where the conditions of a new effort to enforce the law was never fulfilled. they want the leaky border situation corrected now.

      2. please decide whether you’re going to believe in dinosaurs or believe the bible. ha ha, i know you’re a godless insult-artist, that was just a joke. but seriously, you have a largescale lack of knowledge about both science and religion if you rely on such ignorant touchstones to balance your humorous quips on. i guess the people who’d laugh at that are about as uninformed as you.

      3. people who studied how to dismantle parts of ACA in order to make it work efficiently and actually bring costs down are finding too much interconnected garbage aimed at shoving huge chunks of money from the economy into the bureaucracy and keep the money flowing. actual total repeal and a return to previous state-by-state insurance oversight would allow a different policy which could rest on previously untried cost-reduction and coverage-improving measures as selling insurance across state lines and establishing multi-state high-risk pools. most republicans know this and believe it but have to just tune out the meaningless democrat drone-shout of “YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF YOUR OWN” … whatever. it calls for cutting embedded cronyism out of the system, the kind currently protected by ACA.

      4. No Republican I know wants to “get” China. This sentence is so badly worded that even a clear assumption about what you PROBABLY meant is not possible. What, “get” them dirty rats? “Get” them a new car? “Get” out of town? Please don’t try again though, if you sprain yourself ACA might not help you.

  6. to sum it up, i understand how you think we have no ideas. we have no ideas you are equipped to understand, because you’d rather believe the proven liars who tell you that you are the smartest thing on the whole planet.

    1. Seems like while there may be some ideas, there’s no GOP leader. My guess is that’s why Trump decided to run as an R instead of a D… He saw a leadership vacuum.

      1. “He saw a leadership vacuum.”

        Do you just make this crap up?

        Like the “leadership vacuum” in the Dem cabal with Hilliar SUCKING up all the cash?

        Look at the Rep slate–looks like America, talks like America, diverse ideas like America.

        Look at the Dems–a bunch of old white guys. The “leadership vacuum” sucked up all the diversity of ideas and appearances.

    2. Hey, you put forth a wonderful effort there, Sport.

      You’re right about one thing, though. You have no ideas I’m equipped to understand because I have an internal protective mechanism against stupid ideas. Why in the world would I allow my thinking to lurch backward so I can be on the same plane as you?

      And you’re incorrect about so many things and especially this – I’m not the smartest thing on the planet – far from it. But even as dumb as I am, I can still tell when an idea is a stupid one. And Republicans give me a steady stream of stupid ideas to chuckle about.

      The Good News? The next generations seem to be able to discern between stupid ideas and pragmatic progress. The Republican Party is in the throes of a fairly quick, but painful death because the times are leaving you behind and you just can’t adapt.

      Now feel free to give me the standard warning about the country going down in a wall of flames, fanned by the evil of gay marriage, Mexicans and poor brown-skinned American kids who milk the system with their “free lunch” programs at school and their free Obama cell phones.

      Maybe Hillary will make you less angry. One thing seems fairly certain. There won’t be a Republican in the White House to be angry at.

  7. Pay Attention:

    I think this race is just about anyone’s game. Right now there is a top 8 (Bush, Carson, Cruz, Fiorina, Kasich, Rubio, Trump, Walker). But, it is entirely one of these can still get a bump to get into mix again (Christie, Huckabee, Paul and even maybe Perry or Jindal).

    Right now the potential viability looks to be around 5%. That is all one needs at this time.

    The real shake-out won’t happen until candidates have nothing to gain by staying in. That doesn’t happen until these debates are all done and they are looking at a shellacking in Iowa, NH and SC. And, even then 7-8% might be enough to stay in the race through Super Tuesday. This or shortly thereafter proportional awarding of delegates ends and we go to a period of winner-take-all. Thus, after Super Tuesday, I think only the top 2-3 will stay in the race.

  8. I’m beginning to this this is a winning combination:

    Bush / Rubio top of the ticket. Then announce early:
    Kasich: Sec/ State to re-establish American integrity abroad.
    Fiorino: Sec / Treas: Unwind the Dodd/Frank, etc. debacle.
    Carson: Health Care Czar to unravel Obamacare

    Team approach to face a new generation, rather than a personality cult (Trump) or BS-artist omniscient leader (Clinton)

    1. Bush is the establishment pick once again. Is that truly what you want? After we saw how well that worked the last two times. It’s time for someone strong with good, sound ideas that is NOT part of the DC cabal. Or do you want more of the same?

  9. Really??? How about shedding the 7 below him first? Namely people who can’t even pay their staff.

  10. Has any candidate run an ad against Trump yet?

    Why not a spot showing Trump calling Kim Jong-un a “fat little pig”? That sounds like something he’d say. Demonstrate why President Trump and his schoolyard taunts might not always be such a great idea. Maybe I am a little paranoid, but I feel that it is usually best to keep nukes on one side of the room… and crazy people on the other.

  11. Ben Carson will be the GOP nominee. Carson/Fiorina in ’16 for the GOP. I don’t care for Florin a whole lot but that is my guess.

    Carson supporters want him. Trump supporters don’t like the establishment but they would likely go to Carson if Trump started to fade. I don’t see anyone else on the right garnering the support of Ben Carson.

    It all started at the prayer breakfast. I just have a feeling about him.

  12. Anonymous,

    While I think a lot can happen in the next six months, it is clear roughly 50% of GOP voters currently want a non-politico. Thus, I think it likely half the ticket will include a non-politico. An entire ticket might cause concern with regard to governance and be problematic in the general. I think the concern may be greatest with Carson as he has run nothing significant and never been elected. But I think you may be halfway right.

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