Well, it matters a hell of a lot of your goal is to win elections.
Fair enough. If it's not about conservatives winning elections, then the level of support doesn't matter.
I don't view electing someone who is of the character or stance I find abhorrent a "win". There is not major party candidate who fits, imho, and support for a third party candidate is unlikely to reach the level required to garner 270 electoral votes, so this time around, it doesn't matter. These things change, anyway, and the greatest enemy of a Trump Administration will be Trump should that come to pass, just as the greatest enemy of another Clinton Administration would be Hillary. Their actions will incite enmity.
The exact percentage was not my point. My point was how a group of voters that isn't even large enough to win a nomination is going to be large enough to win a general election. So you could pick any number you wanted out of a hat to make the point. A percentage large enough to win the general election should be able to win a nomination easy. It's a simple question of math, because the electorate wasn't "handed" a Hobson's choice. It voted for this Hobson's choice.
If you count the crossover democrats in open primary states as GOP voters and a legitimate part of the electorate, Trump did not win 'easily'. He won with a plurality, the lowest in decades. So, far from it, those may have been the results, but would voters have cast their ballots differently (for someone other than the 15 other candidates) if they had known the outcome?
This also completely ignores the effects of trump's antics dominating media at the expense of other candidates (just that reality teevee star coming out), and the intense and I honestly believe coordinated smear campaign (just one, it started after Iowa and is ongoing) against the clear frontrunner had not Trump been in the race.
As for the electorate, Idiocracy sums it up nicely, with 40% of the GOP primary voters (if you count the democrat crossover vote as GOP primary voters) voting for Trump. The 16 way split of the remaining votes still produced a clear front-runner among those, even as the smear campaign intensified. (Really, his daddy killed JFK?)
This is the first election in which media such as facebook and twitter were significant, if not dominant factors. That both have as much veracity as their posters. Influencing people on social media has been studied as an effective propaganda medium and marketing tool, and we are seeing the results of that as well.
Here's the reality that political junkies like us don't want to admit. Personality, charisma, and communications skills are just as important as the message when it comes to winning an election. So unless we come up with a conservative who has the right personality/charisma/communications skills, we're not going to elect or even nominate a conservative. Period. That person was not in this primary, so no conservative was nominated. End of story. And ask yourself -- prior to Reagan, when was the last time the U.S. elected a true conservative?
Reagan would never have resorted to the outright smear and slanderous tactics Donald Trump employed to 'win'. The public would not have tolerated that either. If you want to think about something, consider that the plurality who voted for Trump voted for the most arrogant, bloviating, superficial, and frankly obnoxious candidate in recent history. That he likely had legions of internet trolls out cramming social media and other sites with not only pro-trump propaganda but (especially) anti-Cruz (although Cruz was not the only one--ask 'little Marco') hit pieces which were fabrications or unsubstantiated and definitely unresearched, repeated in the media echo chamber, retweeted, facebooked and then used as 'sources' which said...
The electorate was angry that the people sent to Washington didn't fulfill their promises, and in their anger they jumped on the bandwagon of the first person who promised them what they wanted. They didn't look past "WALL!" and Not importing Muslims, both of which have already been walked back. But in their anger, they also attacked the person the operatives DIDN'T want, namely Cruz. The mob psychology of those attacks, paid and spontaneous, will be the stuff of PhDs in Communications and Psychology for years. The same electorate which had rejected Newt for his family affairs turned around an election later and embraced an unabashed serial adulterer, why? Because they thought his latest wife is 'hot'?
Who knows? But one thing is certain, they voted for the person who resonated their anger, not any shred of principle they may have had, and in their anger formed a virtual lynch mob for Ted Cruz that continues in its anger, unfulfilled, because he didn't bow to the heir apparent and kiss his ring (or whatever).
We have to get lucky.
This wasn't luck. Idiocracy sums it up nicely
In the future, the GOP will not be eliminating open primaries. This allows the influence of Democrats to be felt within the party. Which is another reason to seek a third party.
When I say it does not matter, now, the die is cast for this election barring incident or accident.
There will be no do-over.
For the next four years the country will be in the hands of a New York Liberal.
After that four years matters--and in the meantime matters, to get viable candidates on ballots nationwide for a party which will reflect the views of those the GOP has disenfranchised.
If enough progress is made, those who are finally convinced that the GOP isn't going to make them any more free than the Democrats may move over. It will be slow, at first especially, fighting the "I wanna win, now!" factor as well as the "Bolshevik factor" (Majority Party, and anything else is a "loser" or will "waste your vote").
Trump will get his true believer vote, and I believe votes from a significant number of people who are more afraid of Hillary than are afraid of him. The latter group may even outnumber the rest.
But as the campaign progresses, his past will come out more, his gaffes will be used against him, his waffling on issues exposed, his Liberalism on display, and we'll see how many votes that costs him.
Plus, he will be up against a media savvy (and still Liberal media beloved) candidate who has no principles, either. His freebie media will grind to a halt and the outrageous will be used against him. If he slides to the left he should be a shoo-in to pick up some of Bernie's Communists. In a sense, that will be a more even matchup, because there will be no expectations of fundamental civility from either one.
