2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,977
- 52,257
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Yes...the other guys and gal during the primaries would not have been able to do better than Trum....
Dear Repentant NeverTrumpers: No One Else Could Have Won - American Greatness
Conservatives are taking their lumps with more grace than I thought they would. Perhaps the pleasure of seeing Hillary and the entire Clintonone Family go down—one hopes never to rise again—provides significant, and unexpectedly powerful, consolation. I know it would have for me had I been anti-Trump.
However, a strain of residual bitterness remains that says: “Any Republican would have won.” This is the logical extension of the pre-November 8 argument, “Trump is the only Republican in that field who could have lost to Hillary.”
I’m not buying it. First, what makes anyone think that the man who won all those primaries, against the “best Republican field in history” (we were told endlessly), would have run worse in the general against all the others in that defeated field? True, Trump was not racking up huge majorities in most of those primaries.
But by definition, his opponents weren’t either: they were doing worse. How does that translate into a later big win? Trump, in Paul Ryan’s words, “heard a voice that no one else did.” He was able turn that into enthusiasm and votes. Why should we expect that the others would have, come November, accomplished with the whole electorate what they could not accomplish with their own party between February and June?
A main anti-Trump argument all along was that Trump would be a loser on the magnitude of Goldwater or McGovern. The point here is not to recriminate or name names. It’s to note that many of the people who made that argument have now shifted its terms. The new twist goes: Trump is so bad, it proves that any of the others, all of whom were better, would have won going away.
Really? The election turned on four states, one of which no Republican had won since 1984 (Wisconsin), two since 1988 (Michigan, Pennsylvania), and one since 2004 (Ohio)—the latter by a mere 2 percent, or 100,000 votes. If that one state had flipped, John Kerry would have been president. Trump by contrast won Ohio by almost eight points. And, with the exception of an Ohio-Pennsylvania combination, he would have had to lose three of those four states to lose the election.
Dear Repentant NeverTrumpers: No One Else Could Have Won - American Greatness
Conservatives are taking their lumps with more grace than I thought they would. Perhaps the pleasure of seeing Hillary and the entire Clintonone Family go down—one hopes never to rise again—provides significant, and unexpectedly powerful, consolation. I know it would have for me had I been anti-Trump.
However, a strain of residual bitterness remains that says: “Any Republican would have won.” This is the logical extension of the pre-November 8 argument, “Trump is the only Republican in that field who could have lost to Hillary.”
I’m not buying it. First, what makes anyone think that the man who won all those primaries, against the “best Republican field in history” (we were told endlessly), would have run worse in the general against all the others in that defeated field? True, Trump was not racking up huge majorities in most of those primaries.
But by definition, his opponents weren’t either: they were doing worse. How does that translate into a later big win? Trump, in Paul Ryan’s words, “heard a voice that no one else did.” He was able turn that into enthusiasm and votes. Why should we expect that the others would have, come November, accomplished with the whole electorate what they could not accomplish with their own party between February and June?
A main anti-Trump argument all along was that Trump would be a loser on the magnitude of Goldwater or McGovern. The point here is not to recriminate or name names. It’s to note that many of the people who made that argument have now shifted its terms. The new twist goes: Trump is so bad, it proves that any of the others, all of whom were better, would have won going away.
Really? The election turned on four states, one of which no Republican had won since 1984 (Wisconsin), two since 1988 (Michigan, Pennsylvania), and one since 2004 (Ohio)—the latter by a mere 2 percent, or 100,000 votes. If that one state had flipped, John Kerry would have been president. Trump by contrast won Ohio by almost eight points. And, with the exception of an Ohio-Pennsylvania combination, he would have had to lose three of those four states to lose the election.
