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Joe Walsh And His Amazing Technicolor Primary Against Trump (not the musician)
Henroid
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
Mexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
I'm kinda shocked there isn't a thread about this so here we go.
Trump has a Republican primary challenger for 2020. It's former Congressman Joe Walsh, not to be confused with the musician of the same name.
For those unfamiliar with him, Walsh was a Tea Party advocate and one term Congressman out of Illinois (he lost to Tammy Duckworth, a notably huge improvement). He went on after that to do a conservative talk radio show (which he just lost last night by the way, though he would've had to give it up anyway in pursuit of an elected office). He's very much what you'd expect; racist comments, pro 2nd-amendment (and has gone as far as to threaten people), and my favorite, for all his family values talk, wasn't paying child support for a bit. Don't worry on that last one; legally speaking he's all in the clear and caught up. All that said, he's pretty solidly for at least a year (maybe a bit more) been critical of Trump and the administration. He has concerns about the structure of government and the laws surrounding it getting really fucked up and he thinks the best solution is to run against Trump. I can't speak to his odds just yet but he is very much playing to the moderate Republican, something that arguably exists.
So here's what this thread is about.
- Discussing Joe Walsh; people might not know who he is and what he's about
- Discussing the implications of a primary campaign against a sitting president by their own party
- Discussing the primary campaign in question
- If you're going to share Joe Walsh tweets / things he's said try to make it election specific; he certainly has no shortage of opinions but we should try to filter them
- That said to the above note, I think election issues and his comments on them are also fair game
Trump has a Republican primary challenger for 2020. It's former Congressman Joe Walsh, not to be confused with the musician of the same name.
For those unfamiliar with him, Walsh was a Tea Party advocate and one term Congressman out of Illinois (he lost to Tammy Duckworth, a notably huge improvement). He went on after that to do a conservative talk radio show (which he just lost last night by the way, though he would've had to give it up anyway in pursuit of an elected office). He's very much what you'd expect; racist comments, pro 2nd-amendment (and has gone as far as to threaten people), and my favorite, for all his family values talk, wasn't paying child support for a bit. Don't worry on that last one; legally speaking he's all in the clear and caught up. All that said, he's pretty solidly for at least a year (maybe a bit more) been critical of Trump and the administration. He has concerns about the structure of government and the laws surrounding it getting really fucked up and he thinks the best solution is to run against Trump. I can't speak to his odds just yet but he is very much playing to the moderate Republican, something that arguably exists.
So here's what this thread is about.
- Discussing Joe Walsh; people might not know who he is and what he's about
- Discussing the implications of a primary campaign against a sitting president by their own party
- Discussing the primary campaign in question
- If you're going to share Joe Walsh tweets / things he's said try to make it election specific; he certainly has no shortage of opinions but we should try to filter them
- That said to the above note, I think election issues and his comments on them are also fair game
Henroid on
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That said, I wonder if Trump is fuming about it. I see any sign of defiance as something he doesn't care for.
Is there going to be a primary election? Like, is anyone going to vote on this? debates? does the GOP as a whole acknowledge the legitimacy of this challenge as something that can succeed?
absolutely pointless
if he wanted to accomplish anything he'd run third party
Sorry mods.
Anybody who stumped for the Tea Party and went on to be a "media personality" is just a different side of the same coin and should be treated with the appropriate amount of disdain and scorn.
In short: Fuck Joe Walsh and whatever he pretends to stand for.
I imagine were going to see a lot of Joe Walshes throw their hat into the ring to try and get a slice of this pie and I honestly don't see any of them being worth mention. The GOP is not going to field anybody against trump because they've lashed themselves too tightly to his mast. Its him or a Democrat. A moderate republican won't get the MAGA vote and the moderate Republicans will vote trump because "at least hes not a Democrat."
*gestures vaguely at everything*
But look at what we're facing here. Let's hypothesize his primary gets traction and he actually wins against Trump. That automatically puts Trump out from having a 2nd term, and in the general the Democratic primary candidate has a possibly easier time.
Best case scenario is that it gets enough coverage and Walsh, et al depress a non-zero number of republican voters in the general.
Trump's response will probably be entertaining, though.
See, that makes me think he has even less chance than Weld.
Weld's going for the establishment Republicans who are embarrassed by Trump. It's not a big enough group to win but at least we know they exist.
Who exactly is Walsh going for? The base has no reason not to vote for Trump.
Considering how much support Trump has, I'm horrified to think of what constitutes a "moderate" Republican. Are they the ones that pretend to be upset about Trump but then still 100% support him?
And that's the crux of the problem. Trump et al are basically one of if not the final iterations of what Conservatism has been all about for the last 30 or 40 years. You can't really go back to saying the quiet parts quiet again now that they've been saying them out loud for the last 2 and half years. That genie is out of the bottle. It's all or nothing from here on out and anybody trying to be subtle about it is going to fail miserably against somebody like Trump who will just come out and say whatever deranged thing it is everybody's conservative uncle has been saying at Thanksgiving for the last 9 years.
Weld is challenging Trump from the left. Maybe too far from the left, in fact.
Like, I'm sure that very few people here would like his positions but he was considered a moderate Republican twenty years ago (and kind of famously had his career in national politics killed by Jesse Helms).
Oh yeah, missed your post, sorry. Doesn't really have any policy positions on his website
AFAIK, none have yet but a few states have said they might.
South Carolina is the most likely as the SC GOP apparently did it in 2004 for Bush (and the SC Democrats did it in 1996 and 2012 for Clinton and Obama).
There was talk among the banking lobby of Sanford or Kasich running, but there’s no path- Trump is super popular among a smaller party, but not so small that there’s room in the middle
That's John Walsh.
It is actually costing them votes though. It's what helped the Democrats in 2018, it's why a bunch of GOP Reps are suddenly retiring and it's what a bunch of the GOP in general are worried about. Trump and his politics are driving plenty of voters away from the party, most notably in the suburbs.
I'm not sure there's anything for a primary challenger to Trump to capitalize on though. The kind of people who would even notice a primary while there's an incumbent in office are not the kind of voters Trump is driving away.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Of course, the main point is that Trump has gotten at times the second highest approval amongst Republicans for a President in history, second only to Post 9-11 George W. Bush. He ain't going anywhere.
(Also that's a nice quote about the endemic lack of spines in Congress).
This feels like this shouldn't be a thing in our political system. Just because you're a republican or Democrat doesn't mean your happy with the person in office and doesn't mean you'll vote for the other side. If somebody wants to challenge the sitting president from their own party, it should be embraced.
Reagan in 1976, Kennedy in 1980
Practically speaking, there's no situation in which a serious primary challenge to a sitting president improves that party's chances of winning the presidency. Which means that parties will do all they can to avoid it.
this is gonna have no relevancy and never-trumpers are basically all phonies
if he was running third party he might actually draw enough votes to shank trump, but doing that would cause a democratic presidency and that is and always will be a bigger threat to these guys than anything trump would do
a complete pointless grift and joe walsh deserves nothing, no credit whatsoever
Ted Kennedy's primary run against Carter comes to mind.
Dude won 11 states, including California, plus DC.
Roosevelt in 1912 too also I think.
I don't know if there's any numbers for this, but I think Trump's very high approval with Republicans, matched with his very low approval with the general public, means a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump have stopped calling themselves Republican. That doesn't mean they won't rush right back as soon as a saner candidate shows up to reclaim the party.