Trump and Carson have until spring to launch third-party runs

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson said Sunday that talk of a contested convention to select the Republican nominee violates terms of neutrality agreements they made with party leaders not to mount third-party campaigns.

Cruz has surged as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has faded in Iowa, a rise and fall attributed to renewed focus on security issues in the wake of the December 2 attack that left 14 dead in California. Establishment Republicans fear a Trump nomination would cause the party to lose the election and possibly seats in Congress, because he has advocated controversial positions such as rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented workers and a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on December 8 showed that 68 percent of Trumps supporters would vote for him if he broke from the party and ran as an independent. “I also read in these same papers and outlets that Hillary Clinton has all this experience – and she hasn’t done anything”, said Ken McCormick, 44, a Republican voter in Iowa. Waiting until summer would be too late.

“If the leaders of the Republican Party want to destroy the party, they should continue to hold meetings like the one described in the Washington Post this morning”, Carson said in a statement. The complex drama may have been an electoral drag: Stevenson was trounced by Republican Dwight Eisenhower that November.

“If this was the beginning of a plan to subvert the will of the voters and replace it with the will of the political elite, I assure you Donald Trump will not be the only one leaving the party”, Carson said in a statement that referenced Trump’s repeated threats to leave the party if treated “unfairly”.

Both Trump and Carson have pledged to support the Republican nominee for president. It was reportedly hatched Monday when more than 20 GOP officials and leading figures dined in Washington, D.C., at and event hosted by Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus.

But the poll also showed that Cruz, a conservative senator who has been careful not to publicly criticise Trump, has surged into second place nationally with 22 percent. This is a premise rejected by almost all Republicans, and a great many non-Republicans, but the evidence supports it….

Paul’s band of activists gamed the primary process in several caucus states.

In fact, the anti-establishment sentiment stoked by the upstart Gingrich and congressmen who embraced the tea party that surged during Obama’s presidency rather than face defeat in primaries has resulted in a GOP constituency that doesn’t particularly care about the party itself, certainly not when compared to its allegiance to Trump.

Winger says he has charted the easiest path to get on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia —forming a minor political party in some states and running as an independent in others. We need to get away from that.

For instance, a couple of months ago the GOP candidates were asked whether the Iraq War was a mistake; their answers did tell us something about what they’ve learned from recent history. And Bigotry; something probably best explained in an educational, non-political setting…

“The infrastructure of American politics is so tied to the two-party system that it is hard to overcome that”, Stone said.

Delegates are committed to vote for the candidate they were selected to support on the first ballot. A handful of moderate intellectuals has sought to move the party back toward the center, but their record so far is one of unbroken failure…

“Think about how a Republican candidate would campaign”, Stone said. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.

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