And now it's over

With yesterday's decision by John Kasich to end his campaign, Donald Trump has no opposition, and will be the nominee of the Republican Party for this year's Presidential election. He's not the one I would have wanted to see, but when it comes to November, I'll have to vote for him, given the opposition.

Kasich's leaving was fore-ordained. After Ted Cruz left, Trump was sure to make the 1,237 delegates he would need, so Kasich had no chance to get a later ballot where he might get the nod. It was futile to continue.

My wife has a visceral feeling against Trump. She will be supporting Clinton — even, just yesterday, gave the Clinton campaign a small sum of money — though she has some misgivings about her. For me, I'm more negative about Clinton than she is, and more willing to give Trump a chance, so my vote is going to go the other way. And in this very blue state, it won't make much of a difference. Clinton will win it. But I'm hoping Trump turns the polls around. We certainly don't need four years of Hillary Clinton after eight years of Barack Obama.

Right now, this blog is not endorsing Trump. That will happen if and when he is nominated. But on the chance that some unpredictable event happens that changes the picture of an inevitable Trump nomination, I'm holding up on a formal endorsement.

Ted Cruz has left the race…

…and while John Kasich continues to run — I got an e-mail from his organization today asking for funds — it doesn't really look to be at all likely that Donald Trump can be prevented from getting the nomination. The only way a contested convention can be brought about is if enough votes go to Trump's opponents to keep him from getting a majority of the delegates. And that would require Cruz to win a fair number. And he's not going to gain any more. So it looks as though Trump will be nominated.

I'm no fan of Donald Trump, as you know if you have been reading this blog. But in a race against Hillary Clinton, I have to support Trump. Clinton will continue President Barack Obama's unfortunate policies, and if anything, expand them. She was for Obamacare before Obama was. And she's exercised bad judgment in things like the e-mails.

Now I will not deny that Hillary Clinton is competent. But that makes the prospect of her in the White House even more of a scary proposition. While Trump's more outrageous proposals will never come to pass — Congress or the Supreme Court will knock them out — Clinton might actually get hers through, and I shudder to think of what she'll do, and this worries me more.

Two days till Primary Day…

…and as long as I can make it to the polls, I'll be voting for John Kasich. The polls all say that Donald Trump will win the state, but there seems to be some Kasich support in this district, and I'm hoping it shows that Kasich will win some delegates in the districts near Washington, D. C. (including the one I'm in). At least two of the candidates for my district seat in Congress on the Republican side have openly expressed their support for Kasich (one for Ted Cruz, and two haven't expressed support for anyone that I've seen), and this may be a sign.

Statewide, as I said, Trump will win it, but the polls differ on whether Kasich or Cruz will take 2nd place. I've seen recent poll results both ways.
Probably more eyes will be on Pennsylvania than Maryland, though. And That's probably justified because it's a bigger state. We'll be seeing results for a lot of the Northeast, though: from Rhode Island down to here, except for New York, which voted last week, every one of the Atlantic coastal states votes this Tuesday. It's going to be interesting!

I wonder how they got me

I've been receiving a lot of e-mails from everyone ranging from John Kasich to Paul Ryan (presumably from their staffs; I doubt that any of these people acrtually sent out the e-mails personally!) asking for contributions. And while, if I had money to spare, I might give to some of them — certainly to Kasich — I definitely do not have the money. But one source of e-mails surprises me: Ted Cruz. I get e-mails like one that begins, “Bruce, You are a key supporter. Your support has allowed us to take on the Washington Cartel and win. …” I wonder how I was tabbed as a Cruz supporter. I'm certainly anything but! While I have voted for the Republican nominee in every Presidential election for almost 50 years, a Cruz nomination would drive me to vote Libertarian! I wish I could write back to the actual people who send out those e-mails, and tell them that I think Ted Cruz is the worst possible choice for a nominee.

I wish I could believe it!

There is a post I read yesterday, dated a week ago but first coming to my attention yesterday evening, by Seth Abramson on the Huffington Post site, with the title “John Kasich Will Be the Republican Nominee for President.” I really wish I could believe things will play out that way. It would cap a crazy primary election season with the best outcome I could possibly imagine: a Republican ticket that I could enthusiastically support.

The major premise of Abramson's post is that:

Donald Trump needs 1,237 delegates to win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and not only will he not get to that figure prior to the Convention — he’d need to win well over 50 percent of the remaining delegates to do so, and even during his current run as front-runner he’s only won 46 percent of delegates — he won’t even get close enough to that mark to pass it via uncommitted delegates at the Convention.

Ted Cruz and John Kasich staying in the race through Cleveland not only will ensure that Trump can’t get close to 1,237 delegates via primary and caucus votes, it will also ensure that both men have a reasonable delegate total by the time they arrive at the Convention — more than enough to keep both of them in the picture in the view of Convention delegates.

So far I think he is right. There is a good chance, even a likelihood, that the first ballot in Cleveland will sho no majority for either Trump or Cruz. However, in his next point he strays into unpredictable territory; whether it will come about is unclear to me:

Republican Party elders have more than enough clout to make sure that “Rule 40(b)” gets changed prior to or at the Convention, thereby enabling Republicans like John Kasich who haven’t won a majority of delegates in eight states to nevertheless be considered for the nomination.

I hope so; it is very important that that rule be changed, and I think the probability of this happening is high enough that I cannot be certain whether it comes about. Certainly, without the change in the rules, Trump gets the nomination, even if Cruz is the one pushing hardest to keep the rule.

The next two points are crucial, and I devoutly hope Abramson is right:

After the first ballot in Cleveland — during which no candidate will have the require[d] delegates for nomination — most of the delegates will be free to vote for whomever they wish, and while Ted Cruz has craftily planted his supporters in many delegations, it’s not nearly enough to get him to 1,237 delegates on the second ballot.

Whereas Ted Cruz is loathed by the Republican Party elite, has lost to Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polls 55 percent of the time since November 2015, and has no actual accomplishments in government to point to, John Kasich hasn’t lost a single head-to-head poll to Hillary Clinton in 2016, is broadly if imperfectly acceptable to both Party elites and movement conservatives, and is far and away the most accomplished Republican primary candidate left.

If “electability” were what mattered most, the second of these would be very important. Will it? Most certainly Kasich is hoping so. It's also what I really wish would happen. I think that last point is the key to Abrahamson's argument. But the next point is equally critical:

Marco Rubio has deliberately held onto his 172 delegates so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland — a ticket that will begin with somewhere between 350 and 600 delegates on the first ballot at the Convention, depending upon how many delegates John Kasich wins going forward.

Has Rubio held onto his delegates “so that he can create a unity ticket with John Kasich in Cleveland”? I can't read Rubio's mind. He certainly has a plan to be an influence on the result. So Abrahamson's next point is a given:

Rubio is certain not to give his delegates away for free, nor to give them to his arch-enemies Cruz or Trump, nor to — as some suppose — merely fade into the background when he was and remains among the most ambitious politicians in the Republican Party.

And the next point is also certainly true:

A Kasich/Rubio ticket would appeal to both mainstream Republicans (Kasich) and Tea Partiers (Rubio), to both white and Latino voters, to younger voters who want to see someone relatively young on the ticket, to those looking for a ticket whose members run the gamut from executive to legislative experience at both the state and federal levels, and to those who believe all members of a presidential ticket should hail from a major battleground state.

Yes, a Kasich/Rubio ticket would be acceptable to many Republicans and to people who might be persuaded to vote Republican in November. It would be more than merely acceptable to me: John Kasich started off as one of my two favorite candidates, and ever since Chris Christie dropped out has been my #1 choice; Marco Rubio was originally the person I thought would be the Presidential nominee, and one I would not have any qualms about supporting if he had been nominated. The question is not whether Kasich/Rubio would be a good ticket; it is one which I have already said I would support with enthusiasm. The question is whether all these pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which Abrahamson has put on the table will actually fit together to produce a Kasich/Rubio ticket in reality.

I hope so. I wish I could believe it will happen that way. Nothing could happen at Cleveland that would make me happier.

The primary in just over two weeks

In two weeks and a day, the state of Maryland will hold its primary elections. I have said that the only way I could vote for Donald Trump in the primary was if it looked like the only way to stop Ted Cruz. But all the polls show that in this state, Cruz is a distant third. So I can safely vote for my true first choice: John Kasich. And that is the way I will vote on the 26^th. And anyone else in this state that reads my blog, please do the same.

“I'm a Christian first”

Ted Cruz has been quoted as saying: “I'm a Christian first, American second, conservative third and Republican fourth.” Is this what we want for the Presidency? I think not.

Perhaps a clergyman, whose job is to serve God, should be “a Christian (or whatever religion he is) first.” But I think a President, whose job is to guide the country, has to be an American first.

While I don't like Donald Trump, I'd still take him over Cruz. My first choice is still John Kasich. But if, as Cruz has said, A vote for John Kasich … is a vote for Donald Trump, I say, “So be it.” I'd rather see Trump nominated than Cruz.

John Kasich for President

The results are in on yesterday's primaries. Marco Rubio, who was the man I expected to be the eventual nominee, did so poorly in his home state of Florida that he quit the race for the Presidency. But John Kasich won Ohio. He won it big. The most recent polls showed him narrowly defeating Donald Trump in Ohio, with the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls showing a 39% to 35% margin. The actual results were 47% to 36%.

I had been withholding an endorsenment, though ever since Chris Christie withdrew, those who read this blog knew that Kasich was my favorite, only because Rubio was still an acceptable choice, and if I thought he was more likely to beat Trump and Ted Cruz, and Kasich did not, I wanted a chance to endorse him. But now the race is down to three men:

1. Donald Trump, an inexperienced-at-politics man whose knowledge of the Constitution is flawed and whose manner is decidedly un-Presidential,
2. Ted Cruz, a religious fanatic whose accession to the Presidency would really hurt our First Amendment rights, and
3. John Kasich, who has been such an outstanding Governor of Ohio that his popularity there, where they know him best, is immense.

With the above characterizations, it is clear that Kasich warrants my support. If it ever comes down to Trump vs. Cruz, I'd take Trump (unlike my wife, who has such a visceral dislike of Trump that she would certainly vote for any Democrat — even socialist Bernard Sanders, though she does not approve of his socialistic politics — to defeat him). But as long as Kasich is in the running, I have to say he is the best choice.

Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump?

I got a surprise today. One of the two candidates I considered my favorite at the start of this campaign, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who withdrew after the New Hampshire primary, gave his support to Donald Trump.

I guess, on the issues, they are not far apart. When I did a CNN questionnaire a while ago, it showed Christie #2 and Trump #3 in closeness to me. But Trump is someone without any governing experience (something I would think Christie would consider important), and he really turns off a lot of people. (Of course, Christie turns off a lot of people too, but not in quite the same way.) It's not a development I expected — I figured if anyone would get Christie's endorsement, it would be another governor, John Kasich.

Which should drop out? Kasich or Rubio?

I had lately been thinking that even though I preferred John Kasich to Marco Rubio as a candidate, the best thing for the Republican Party this year would be for Kasich to drop out and let the reasonable people in the Republican Party coalesce around Rubio to prevent Donald Trump, or even worse, Ted Cruz, from gaining the nomination. But I saw a post yesterday by Tom Bevan entitled “The Case for Kasich Staying In” which makes a case for the reverse, and I quote it in full:

Admittedly, 2016 is a year in which the electorate—especially the rebellious voters who have turned the GOP primary season upside down—aren’t putting a premium on political experience. But of the five Republican candidates left in the field, there's one person who has the traditional résumé indicative of a president of the United States.

That would be 63-year-old John Richard Kasich of Ohio. He’s a pro-life conservative who emphasizes the working poor. He’s a fiscal conservative who helped maneuver President Bill Clinton into balancing the federal books in the 1990s budget wars. He is also, not to put too fine a point on it, governor of a big Midwestern state with a significant distinction: No Republican has ever ascended to the White House without carrying Ohio.

And the Republican “establishment” is trying to force him out of the race.

I don’t have a horse in the GOP nomination fight, but it was hard to argue with Kasich, who said yesterday that anyone calling for him to leave the 2016 race needs to “chill out.” He has as much right to stay in this race as anyone else—and more than some. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

First, let’s talk about the panic that has gripped vast swaths of the Republican Party in the wake of Donald Trump’s smashing victory in Nevada on Tuesday. After months of denial about the strength of Trump’s appeal and wishful thinking about his imminent demise, the GOP establishment now fears that Trump is on the verge of running away with the nomination. Hence the frantic calls for some sort of “unity ticket,” or for Kasich and Ben Carson to get out—or even for Rick Perry, freshly cleared by the courts Wednesday of bogus and politically motivated charges, to get in as a third party alternative. Republicans are grasping for something, anything, to stop Trump before it’s too late.

The trajectory of this race reminds me of the plot of the classic 1983 anti-war movie “WarGames.” The film starts innocently enough, with a teenager trying to pirate the latest video games accidentally hacking into the U.S. defense network. The computer responds by asking the now iconic question in its halting, robotic voice: “SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?”

This is more or less how the Republican establishment viewed Trump’s entry into the 2016 race: a harmless diversion that would be over in a few weeks. Eight months later Donald Trump is at DEFCON 1, threatening to nuke the Republican establishment and win the nomination, and GOP elites are running around shrieking like Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy trying to break into NORAD and pull the plug on the whole thing.

Except it’s looking more and more like this movie ends with the computer winning. Trump heads into Super Tuesday on March 1 with the wind at his back. He’s leading in 10 of the 11 states up for grabs that day, with a combined 595 delegates in play.

The only state where Trump isn’t leading is Texas. Ted Cruz currently has a 5.2-point lead in the RealClearPolitics Average, though the most recent poll, by TEGNA/SurveyUSA, shows the two candidates tied.

Obviously, Texas is a must win for Cruz. If he loses his home state to Trump, his rationale for being the Trump-stopper is demolished. Similar tests awaits Rubio and Kasich on March 15, when both Florida and Ohio are up for grabs as winner-take-all states, for 99 and 66 delegates, respectively.

In Florida, polls taken in late January show Trump with massive leads and, equally as stunning, with support over 40 percent in a multi-candidate race. A new poll is expected later this morning from Quinnipiac University, which will take into account most of what has transpired in February and will give us a better understanding of where Marco Rubio stands in his home state.

In Ohio, there’s not much data to work with either. The most recent poll, also conducted by Quinnipiac last week, shows Kasich trailing Trump by five points, 31 to 26. Things could, and probably will, change by mid-March, but at the moment Kasich remains within striking distance.

Imagine we wake up on Wednesday morning, March 16, to find that Sen. Rubio has lost Florida to Trump, while Gov. Kasich has beaten Trump in Ohio. If that happens, how do Rubio’s supporters, which include much of the existing GOP officialdom, make the case that Kasich should defer to Rubio? Why wouldn’t the logical argument be the other way around?

Kasich bolsters his argument by pointing to the fact that he runs far better against Hillary Clinton in general election match-ups than either Cruz or Rubio. So why wouldn't establishment Republicans rally behind the most "electable" candidate who carries his home state in the primary?

As we’ve already seen, anything can happen in a race as crazy and unpredictable as this one. Which is why John Kasich has every right to stay in this contest through March 15 and let Republican voters in Florida and Ohio have their voices heard. Until then everyone should listen to Kasich and chill out.

An interesting point. And perhaps that is right. Let's see where things stand on March 15.

The South Carolina results

I'm not unhappy with the results of yesterday's South Carolina primary. Yes, the winner was Donald Trump, whose nomination would be a disaster. But I am glad to see that Marco Rubio beat Ted Cruz for second place, and this in a state where Cruz' extremist conservatism might be expected to do well. Since Jeb Bush (who has now withdrawn) and John Kasich got together over 16% of the vote, and Trump's plurality over Rubio was only 10%, if the supporters of so-called “establishment” candidates combine, Trump can be beaten.

And he will be. Trump, even in “winning,” got only a third of the vote. A lot of commentators seem to think this was a big win for Trump, but they don't seem to understand that he only “won” because there was a split in the opposition. As it consolidates, and it looks like Rubio will be the one it consolidates behind, Trump will lose the nomination.

Will Rubio be the candidate?

For a long time, I've been saying that while I preferred Chris Christie (now dropped out) or John Kasich as the candidate, I thought Marco Rubio was the actual probable winner. Then, along came New Hampshire, and Rubio stumbled badly, leaving me in doubt as to the likelihood of his win. Now at least one post that I've seen seems to imply that Rubio has once more emerged as the candidate to beat Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

Possibly. But we will have to see what happens in South Carolina tomorrow.

It's now down to six

It starfted with 17 candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination. Now there are only 6: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and John Kasich. Of course, if you've read my earlier posts, you know I prefer Kasich among those six. But I could support anyone but Cruz if he were the nominee. I prefer that it not be Trump (who has a limited knowledge of what the Constitution says a President can do) or Carson (who, with Trump, has little relevant experience, though I think he'd make an excellent chair of a task force studying how to replace Obamacare). Jeb Bush is, as that CNN questionnaire I took showed, quite close to me on the issues; I'd think he'd make a good President, but I'm afraid that many whose opinion of his brother's Presidency is poor would not vote for him, so my only objection to Jeb Bush is electability. Rubio is somewhat more conservative than I'd prefer. However, he's still within the bounds of acceptability. And running against either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, of course Rubio would get my vote: both of those prospective Democratic nominees are far further to my left than Rubio is to my right.

That is my current take on this election.

Christie withdraws… I'm sorry to say, but…

Chris Christie has withdrawn from the race for the 2016 Republican nomination. It's sad to see this — I thought he was really the best choice, but John Kasich finished very strongly in the New Hampshire primary and the two candidates appealed to a lot of the same voters, I'm sure, as they did to me. So faced with having to vote for one, they settled on Kasich.

And if you look at the three Governors, Kasich, Christie, and Jeb Bush, they got as many votes combined as Donald Trump, the winner. If the people who want an experienced candidate, as I do, unite behind a single candidate, Kasich is a good choice, and could well win the nomination.

Another candidate who also withdrew was Carly Fiorina. I thought she was a promising choice, but needed some political experience. If she had won the California Senate race a few years ago, she might well have been my choice for President this year. But I think she's still a voice that should be heard in the future: perhaps a Cabinet post or the Vice-Presidency.

According to CNN, I agree most with Jeb Bush!

There is a page on CNN's site called the Election Candidate Matchmaker. You answer a series of questions, and it finds the candidate whose positions are closest to your own. I took the quiz, and was interested to see that the candidate it picked out for me was Jeb Bush. Not too bad a choice, but a little surprising. I was a little happier with its 2nd choice for me, which was Chris Christie. But the third was Donald Trump, a big surprise. But I guess it is clear, my opposition to Trump is not based on his positions on the issues. I think he is not acquainted with the limitations imposed on the Presidency by the Constitution, and his manner is unbecoming to a President. And this is why, unlike my wife (who is so opposed to Trump to the point that she could never vote for him against anyone being discussed) I am more willing to accept Trump than some other politicians. In particular, we've discussed a Trump vs. Hillary Clinton matchup, and though she mistrusts Clinton, she would vote for her over Trump. I would vote for Trump over Clinton, because he would at least take the country more in a direction I favor than she would.

The page only gives the top three matches; it doesn't rank them all. So it doesn't put John Kasich in a rank that I could find. And yet I like him about as much as Christie. I wonder where we differ most.

Nothing much has changed, but...

More and more, it looks as though the Republican nominee will be Marco Rubio. That at least two former candidates who have dropped out, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, have specifically endorsed Rubio (though, from my point of view, Santorum's support is a negative!) shows that Rubio is collecting support in the way he needs to be nominated.

But this is really what I've been thinking for some time, and most recently stated in a post a few days ago. While I would prefer to see Chris Christie or John Kasich, I can certainly back Rubio if he is the nominee. And so nothing is really any different. There isn't much more to post about this election.

Montel Williams' post on John Kasich

On Fox News' site, dated yesterday, is a post by Montel Williams entitled “John Kasich is the only GOP candidate who can unite America.” It makes interesting reading.

In it, among other things, Williams says, “I don’t agree with John Kasich on everything.” And I don’t agree with Montel Williams on everything either. In fact, I don't think Kasich is the only good choice. But the column is worth reading, and it points out why Kasich is a much better choice for the Republicans than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. And in fact, Williams doesn't say in his column what he has against any of the other candidates besides those two, so it isn't clear why he says Kasich is the only one.

Sorry for my absence

I haven't been posting here for a few months, in part because of my own life's being complicated (including a surgery and more than a month in a rehabilitation facility), and in part because I do not know what to make of the large support being gathered, according to the polls, by Donald J. Trump in his candidacy for the Presidency. I see him as a very poor choice, though if he is nominated against Hillary Clinton he will get my vote in November, mostly because his direction for the country is closer than hers to what I would like to see. He has no political experience (which his supporters see as a positive! and seems not to understand the Constitution (based on some of his proposals), and thus I see him as really poorly qualified for the office of the Presidency. I certainly would prefer Chris Christie or John Kasich.

However, the Iowa caucus just completed inspired me to resume posting. I was, on the one hand, glad to see Trump receive a lot less support than the polls indicated, though, on the other hand, not very happy that the man who beat him was Ted Cruz, who I like even less than Trump. Yet Cruz' victory is not a big surprise. Iowa seems to be very hospitable to the religious Right; in the two most recent previous elections it gave its support to Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

I do not, however, expect Cruz to be the nominee, any more than were Huckabee and Santorum. For some time, I have been predicting that the eventual nominee would be Marco Rubio. And Rubio's near-tie with Trump for second place makes me even more convinced that this will be the outcome in the end. And while Rubio is not my first or second choice (or even my third or fourth!) I see him as certainly a nominee I can live with.

But New Hampshire may tell a different story next week. We will have to see.

Returning to posting

I haven't posted much for a while, because I was hoping that the Republican candidates' standings would coalesce about something reasonable. It is still astonishing that Donald Trump maintains so much support, though he is also opposed by so many that I doubt that he will actually get the nomination. But right now, nobody else seems to be emerging as a plausible candidate.

There is a strong freeling that a non-politician should be nominated. Besides Trump, the names that show highest in a lot of polls are Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. I don't agree with this idea — I think (as was enunciated by Scott Walker in a recent debate) that “we don't need an apprentice in the White House” — although he was specifically talking of Trump, it really applies to all the non-politician candidates.

Although Walker himself has dropped out, it seems (How the mighty have fallen! Just a few months ago he was at or near the top in many polls.), there are other governors who might make good Presidents: I've written favorably of Chris Christie and John Kasich, but I could easily see Jeb Bush as a good choice, too. But if we must have a non-politician, the best of the lot seems to be Fiorina. In debates and interviews, she has shown that she does her homework. If there's an area which her background does not provide her with the knowledge, she studies it. She wouldn't be my first choice as a presidential candidate, but she's the best of the ones who do not have what I consider the necessary experience.

Comments on Thursday's debate

First of all, I have to confess that I did not watch the debate. I do not, these days, like to stay up late, and I decided to spend my evening going early to bed. So these comments are based, not on observation of the debate itself but on others' comments on the debate.

The consensus was that three of the candidates helped their cause. Of the candidates considered “major,” the winner seems to have been Marco Rubio; however John Kasich seems to won a new-found attention (about which I am, of course, very happy, as can be evinced by my comments of a few days ago), and one candidate who was not even in the main event, Carly Fiorina, has impressed a lot of people. In addition, my actual favorite (though Kasich is becoming something of a “co-favorite”), Chris Christie, seems to have done well. And the beginning of Donald Trump's fall from the top seems to have occurred.

Since Christie and Kasich appear to have both improved their positions and Trump has hurt his own, I think the debate has helped in the struggle to winnow down the candidates. Such candidates I really dislike as Mike Huckabee do not seem to have changed anyone's opinion, which on balance is probably good. So all in all, I'm happy. But the biggest surprise is Carly Fiorina. As I've said, the biggest flaw I see in her is a lack of political experience, but after this debate, it seems she is being considered more seriously. To me, she and Ben Carson form a matched pair — brilliant exemplars of what they are good at, but simply not experienced in the specific needs of political leaders. But their performances were dead opposite in this debate. Fiorina has made people wish she had been in the main debate; Carson has prompted comments as to why he was on the debate stage at all.

Before the debate, I was of the opinion that Scott Walker was the eventual nominee, and I could certainly support him in November 2016 if he were the nominee, though Christie and/or Kasich ranked much higher in my preference list. Now I'm not so sure. I'm more optimistic about the chances of my two favorites, less certain that Walker will pull it out, but even less certain that if it's not Walker, it'll be Jeb Bush. Both Walker and Bush seem to have turned in disappointing performances. But what will happen next? Will Fiorina move into the top ten? Will Trump decide he's an independent and quit running for the Republican nomination? (This would scare me a bit, because it could take just enough votes from the actual Republican candidate to throw the election to Hillary Clinton.) I guess all I can do is wait and see.