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Elections GOP Road to 2016 Primary Thread

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CPAC Straw Poll Results

1) Rand Paul 25.7%
2) Scott Walker 21.4%
3) Ted Cruz 11.5%
4) Ben Carson 11.4%
5) Jeb Bush 8.3%
6) Rick Santorum 4.3%
7) Marco Rubio 3.7%
8) Donald Trump 3.5%
9) Carly Fiorina 3%
10) Chris Christie 2.8%
11) Rick Perry 1.1 %
12) Bobby Jindal .9%
13) Sarah Palin .8%
T14) Mike Huckabee, John Bolton .3%
T15) Lindsey Graham, George Pataki .1%
 
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lol at Trump for putting it out there that he "may" run. What a joke. This will NEVER EVER happen.
 
lol at Trump for putting it out there that he "may" run. What a joke. This will NEVER EVER happen.

Imagine being a career politician and getting beaten by him in a poll. Or Sarah Palin. It's probably (definitely) just idiots anyway, but that still has to sting. There aren't enough unsavory adjectives in the English language to properly describe Donald Trump.
 
Paul is about as electable as his father was.
 
Look like Paul vs Walker sounds rather fast and furious like. :icon_lol:
 
Voters will not elect somebody who didn't graduate college. Bush played a "common man" but had degrees from Yale and Harvard. Will be interesting to see how he's attacked on it though - need to make it known without looking like you're demeaning him for it.
 
Voters will not elect somebody who didn't graduate college. Bush played a "common man" but had degrees from Yale and Harvard. Will be interesting to see how he's attacked on it though - need to make it known without looking like you're demeaning him for it.

I disagree. I think it will help his "every-man" image. It will be a non-issue in the primaries. In the general, any attempt to attach him for it would be met with claims that "the liberal, ivy tower elitists" are trying to bring down anyone who doesn't go through their pre-determined path in life.
 
Largest tax cut in US history would increase the national debt significantly. Republicans seems to only care about the debt when Dems spend more. Whenever they cut revenue, it doesn't matter at all the implications it has on the budget/debt.

I unnderstand Rand may be assuming budget cuts with this. We usually see much less spending cuts with the tax cuts that are made. They usually never offset each other.

Republicans don't actually care about the deficit at all. There is zero evidence of that in terms of their legislative actions, and a lot of evidence to the contrary. What they care about is upward redistribution of wealth (and they play on racism of their base to get poor and middle-class people on their side). Full stop.
 
Largest tax cut in US history would increase the national debt significantly. Republicans seems to only care about the debt when Dems spend more. Whenever they cut revenue, it doesn't matter at all the implications it has on the budget/debt.
Thank you for putting forward an actual argument. I disagree with this argument, but it's a rational argument none-the-less.

I disagree with the argument that Rand's tax cut would be harmful to the national debt because.........


I unnderstand Rand may be assuming budget cuts with this.
........ Rand is the only serious Republican candidate that would propose serious budget cuts (not just "better management" of the current system). Remember that government shut down we had a few months back? It showed where all the low hanging fruit was in our budget. That "catastrophic shutdown" was only a 17% overall budget cut for the Federal government, yet we all survived.


We usually see much less spending cuts with the tax cuts that are made. They usually never offset each other.
I agree. The budget cuts are rarely if ever enough. Do you know what party is responsible for preventing any cut to any government budget at every opportunity? Perhaps some of these wrongs can be corrected with a Republican President and a Republican run House and Senate.
 
Rand should specify what he's cut as part of his platform - it's easy to run on tax cuts and cutting spending but never specifying what spending one would cut.
 
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the presidential was presented with a 2013 clip in which he told a Wisconsin newspaper that he could envision undocumented workers who pay penalties being offered a pathway to citizenship. Walker said Sunday that he has since changed his mind on what many conservatives deem to be "amnesty."

"I don't believe in amnesty, and part of the reason why I've made that a firm position is I look at the way this president has mishandled that issue," Walker said. "I think the better approach is to enforce the laws and to give employers, job creator s the tools like e-verify and other things to make sure the law is being upheld going forward."

Pressed further about the disparity between those two stances, Walker gave his clearest indication yet that he will be a candidate in the Republican primary.

"My view has changed," Walker said. "I’m flat-out saying it. Candidates can say that."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scott...-154742381.html;_ylt=AwrSyCTrVPNUNTEAPbLQtDMD
 
Such as? What positions of his do you find "ridiculous"? It's one thing to simply disagree with someone else's position, but if you're going to call someone's position "ridiculous", you have to actually show why someone's position is "ridiculous". Otherwise you're simply trying to attach a label to someone's argument/position with no evidence.
I've commented extensively on the ridiculous positions of the Pauls, from environmental issues to economic policy. Why revisit all of that here?
 
Paul derping it up:

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/pa...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Taking a page from Sarah Palin's play book:
Remember when we were talking about Ebola last year? Everybody was going crazy about Ebola, and they’re like, oh Republicans didn’t spend enough at the NIH. And they didn’t spend enough on infectious disease. Turns out, the budget had been going up for years and years at NIH, the budget had been going up for infectious disease. You know how much they spent on Ebola? One-40th of the budget was being spent on Ebola. But you know what we did discover? They spent a million dollars trying to determine whether male fruit flies like younger female fruit flies. I think we could have polled the audience and saved a million bucks.
 
A $75 million question confronts Republican candidates for 2016
GOP_2016_CPAC_-05e07.jpg

Call it the $75 million question.

It’s the most important question every Republican who wants to run for president needs to answer — and the one that will divide the massive field between those who can win and the rest.

The $75 million refers to the threshold amount of money a top-tier candidate will need to win the nomination. That number is based on what Mitt Romney raised and spent to win the nomination in 2012 ($76.6 million) and numerous conversations I have had with Republican fundraisers and donors in recent months. And, in truth, it might be a little low.
 

I think this is a bad move for Walker. Some type of amnesty is going to be coming in the future and to stand in the way of it will only be a possible short term victory. For candidates worried about the Tea Party, all they'd have to say is Reagan did it in the 80's.

Flipflopping with the best of em

Or "evolving" if you want to make the change sound deep. In this case, I would call it devolving.
 
Rand should specify what he's cut as part of his platform - it's easy to run on tax cuts and cutting spending but never specifying what spending one would cut.

Yeah, that's the problem there (I mean, I don't see it as one, but from the perspective of people who favor more upward redistribution and see deficits as inherently bad). The public favors cutting spending in the abstract, but you won't get majority support for cutting *any* category of spending at all, and the only thing you can even get a plurality for is foreign aid, which is insignificant. So Republican candidates frequently promise big cuts, but get outraged, outraged at any attempt to figure out what those unspecified cuts are supposed to be on. We see this literally every cycle. I can't believe there are still suckers like Farmer out there.
 
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