Just an idle thought about the Donald as he is approaching base crazification factor numbers. When will Democratic aligned Super-Pacs get involved in a monumental application of Cleek’s Law in key Republican primary states?
Democratic candidates have had some success of playing the Republican primary nomination process to either pick the weakest candidate as their opponent or at least knock out the strongest general election opponent in the primary process. This is done by running ads “against” the most conservative or least electable candidate. The text of those ads goes something like this:
“Washington elite liberals truly fear Dogcatcher Tom Smith as he is too conservative for their values, he has voted for gun rights and for the unborn 119% of the time and has never raised taxes. He even voted against his town’s levee levy which would have saved it from last month’s flood… Tom Smith is the TRUE CONSERVATIVE that Washington Liberals fear….. Paid for Friends of the Incumbent Democratic Senator PAC”
And those ads and mailers are targeted at Republican primary super voters/nursing homes. This tactic has been fairly successful in producing weak GOP candidates in neutral to lean Republican districts.
Nate Silver has looked at the Trump supporters in the Republican primary electorate. From what he says, they seem to be primed to respond in a predictable manner:
My guess is that his support reflected a combination of (i) low-information voters who recognized his name and (ii) voters who share Trump’s disdain for the trappings of the political establishment and (iii) voters who were treating him as an inside joke or a protest vote
This could be especially true as reactionary talk radio are talking up Trump against the “RINO” Establishment… producing an Us vs. Them mentality in the GOP primary base could pay some long term dividends for short money in half a dozen states.
Pissing off liberals is the ur-instinct of American reaction, so time to play with that Pavlovian response.
cmorenc
We should put up ads sponsored by “Americans for Progressive Government” advocating creation of a strict regulatory scheme prohibiting sitting in a car for hours with the motor running in a closed garage – and how pissed off we are that it happens and government hasn’t done anything about it.
craigie
Does that actually work? Perhaps it’s time to conduct the One True Experiment – have Obama come out in favor of breathing, and see what happens.
Richard Mayhew
@craigie: It has worked before (see Nevada 2010 for the Senate, see Missouri 2012 etc) It is not a sure thing, but it is a worthwhile gamble with fairly low up front costs and big potential pay-off.
Jeffro
I dunno…not sure I can sit through a slew of Carly Fiorina ads, especially if I knew they were partially paid for by me.
Redshift
Actually, no. The crazification factor is 27% of voters, not 27% of the GOP.
Yeah, I’m being pedantic, but this isn’t the first time this has come up here. 27% of the GOP base is an amusing bit of political numerology, but it’s not the crazification factor.
jl
@Redshift: It’s the important multiplicative factor in the recursive formula for the purer crazy base of the next less crazy base. It goes all the way down forever, turtles standing on turtles, Russian dolls nested in Russian dolls. Until you round off to get the one ultimate peak crazy voter.
piratedan
@Redshift: well when you’re too insane to be classified as crazy, do we have to come up with another paradigm to shift… do we posit that 27% of the 27% are the batshit factor or perhaps the functionally insane element?
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
If they got the same guy who made the Demon Sheep ad, they might be worth watching for their camp value.
SatanicPanic
@jl: the immortal wingnut. There can be only one.
mainmata
One would like to think that the deep and abiding socio-cultural resentments of conservatives for those that are the “Others” can’t get anymore ugly and perverted but they always do. This country was originally founded by Puritans, on the one hand who were pretty twisted in their religiosity but who deeply believed in the idea of the common weal and, on the other hand, a land-owning aristocracy of slavers and dirt poor white farmers who most definitely did not believe in the common weal. The rural slave owners basically wrote the Constitution to make it work for them alone. While this ended up in the Civil War and multiple Constitutional amendments, our governmental system is woefully ill-suited to the world we live in. The corporations and international billionaires know this and have created a parallel system of government (lobbyists, etc.). If we don’t have a 2nd Constitutional Convention to rewrite the whole thing, I’m not sure the federal level of government is resilient enough to endure the endless onslaughts and we may end up with a de facto Articles of Confederation.
Redshift
@Jeffro: Nah, you’re safe from that. It’s only worth doing if the target is someone who has a chance.
muddy
@cmorenc: That sounds bad for the environment. Can’t Obama just tell them not to drink anti-freeze?
Jeffro
@Redshift: Ok, well, the latest polls showed Trump, then Walker, then Bush…after that was Huckabee, Rubio, Carson, Paul, Cruz, Perry, and Christie. The six who are as of now out of the 1st debate are Kaisch, Jindal, Pataki, Santorum, Fiorina and Graham.
Out of those, it seems to me that supporting Paul, Perry, and Christie pays off best for Democrats (i.e., helps drag down other more legitimately viable contenders such as Walker, Bush, and Rubio). Then again, I think Paul’s support will continue to evaporate no matter how many Aqua Demon Buddha Sheep ads I cough up for, so I am faced with the amusing prospect of hoping Perry and/or Christie stays in there just a bit longer…
Jeffro
@Redshift: Or maybe just go all in on “Democrats for JEB!”, try to make him that toxic so that the R base stays home?
Eric S.
@jl: Haven’t we disproved Peak Wingnut?
Davis X. Machina
@mainmata: The Puritans lost.
Created, but not created in a vacuum — created in the space left empty and made possible by a comprehensive belief by Americans in an atomistic individualism.
Half the people in this country don’t think the noun ‘public’ refers to any actually-existing thing. It’s hard to do social provision, or meaningful regulation, in that environment,
Schlemazel
@Jeffro:
I like the way you think and wish to join your organization!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jeffro: What? Do you have something against Demon Sheep?
piratedan
@Jeffro: maybe he needs a nice new catchphrase…. JEB! The lesser Evil!
Jeffro
@piratedan: Not sure that captures it all…”JEB! Some Democrats have been known to admire his supposedly moderate tendencies, relatively speaking, and would consider voting for him (and you should too, Republicans!)!!” Is that a bumper sticker or the entire bumper?
Lurking Canadian
@cmorenc: Wouldn’t work. Modern emission controls are so good that exhaust isn’t dangerous anymore.
The only way that’d kill somebody is if they’d made after-market modifications to their exhaust system to needlessly belch soot into the…never mind. I just saw what you did there.
Splitting Image
The best thing the Democrats can do at this point is to find someone with a name like James Edward Bush, help him file his papers as an independent, and make sure that he is on the ballot in all 50 states. My understanding is that Jeb can’t use the name Jeb on the ballot (at least in some states) because it’s not his given name, and most people don’t know what his initials stand for.
The Rhinoceros Party did this in Canada some years back when John Turner was leader of the Liberals. They found someone named John C. Turner, ran him as a candidate in Turner’s riding, and forced the Liberals to do a public awareness campaign about their leader’s middle name.
craigie
How very unCanadian of them!
F
Could someone link an example of this? I don’t doubt that it exists, I’d just like to see what it looks like in the wild.
muddy
@F: First Draft covers their shrieking regularly, I don’t like to get all the way out of the boat and go to their actual lairs.
dogwood
@F:
Actually, I think Claire McCaskill did this. During the republican senate primary, she started running some ads about how Todd Aiken was too conservative for Missouri. Don’t know how much this had to do with securing Aiken as her GE, opponent, but she inserted herself into the situation.
Keith
It is good to see Richard indulge his evil planner side.
Paul Dempsey
Not true. You can kill yourself with modern car exhaust. CO levels are low, but the other pollutants in the exhaust will do the job or, what may be worse, leave the victim with horrific levels of disability.
@Lurking Canadian:
Bobby Thomson
The first rule of ratfucking club is no one talks about ratfucking club.
Marc
Liberals are terrified of Donald Trump. Having him as the Republican presidential candidate is our worst nightmare.
Trust me.
Radio One
@Marc: But Donald Trump could be the next Ronald Regan. Remember how we all laughed at Ronald Regan back in the day?
...now I try to be amused
@craigie:
And heterosexuality. Then we might see an epidemic of autoerotic asphyxiation.