Who did you support during the primary?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

NO, not the DEMOCRATIC primary, who did you want the democrat to run against in the REPUBLICAN primary.

I have to be honest, i wanted it to be Trump. he is vulnerable on a million issues, and is not awful on every single policy space, so even if he eked out a victory, better him than Cruz or Rubio.

How about you? Who did you want the democratic nominee to come up against?

[onehandle]

1. I wanted it to be Trump, but I said over and over it wouldn't be Trump.

The GOP just dug their grave.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

2. yeah, i didnt expect them to actually nominate him

but he was the one I was not so secretly rooting for

[BootinUp]

24. same here nt.

[dlwickham]

3. I was thinking Cruz

he's just an asshole and even my conservative family members probably wouldn't have voted for him since he's also a religious nut case

I was afraid Trump would win because people know him and some people vote for who they know, even if they don't know the positions that person has taken

He has the money to run a campaign and I think he's shown that he's not afraid to spend it

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. the christian right do not like trump, without that base I don't know what a republican does

[dlwickham]

8. he's getting some support from them

but I think that's by default rather than them supporting him on principle

[LoverOfLiberty]

15. I was terrified it would be Cruz

because in my opinion he is much more purposefully dangerous than Trump.

[bravenak]

4. I was pulling for Trump

His vanity will kill the gop

[La Lioness Priyanka]

7. he has zero self control and ability to self monitor

[bravenak]

10. He just released his fundraising numbers

He raised 3.2 million dollars for the entire month. This is wonderful. I love this. He is eatimg the gop alive.

[bonemachine]

6. Carson would have been a hell of a pick

All of the crazy of Trump with none of the charisma.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

9. oh yeah. he would be good too. but honestly, that slow talking drove me cray

[peace13]

11. I want real, qualified people to be on the ballot on both sides.

We can never be certain of the outcome of an election. Unfortunately the R's had zero people out of the circus they presented that I would consider qualified for the job. I'm not even sure I can think of a dead R that I would consider, if living of course.

It looks like we may get Jeb after all and that is a scare for me. This is someone Hillary can work with so she might not mind the match up.

[moonscape]

16. I was torn. Although I saw Trump as the easiest to beat, there's something

distressing about our system and culture that allows someone like Trump to prevail.

It's not Trump that worries me, but the fact that the bar is lowering, the discourse becoming more crude, and a large segment of this country not only doesn't dare but supports and relishes it.

That he can exist at all is depressing, so the other part of me wanted us to run against a sane person.

[Quackers]

12. I thought Kasich would done better with Repubs than he did.

Oh well, no one ever said they were smart.

[TwilightZone]

21. He was apparently a little too rational.

Which isn't saying much in that crowd. Everything is relative.

[Jim Lane]

32. The flip side of the OP's question - Kasich is the one I most opposed

Of the 17 that started out on the GOP side, I thought (and think) that Kasich would be their strongest general election candidate.

Last time around, my "pick" (in that regard) was Huntsman, who did even worse then than Kasich did this year. We're fortunate that, as you say, the Republicans aren't very smart.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

42. Agreed kasich is just as toxic but a harder candidate to beat

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Trump

Trump has been the greatest gift to the Democratic Party in its history.

Cruz would have been the worst president possible, he is a heartless fool who will use nukes.

[TwilightZone]

14. Trump or Cruz. I figured that everyone hates Cruz and Trump would probably melt down at some point.

[athena]

17. There was not a single person in that lineup I could support.

Each one was just as crazy as all the others. I tried to watch some of the Republican debates, but I couldn't take the level of hate and anger in them. If I remember correctly, every candidate who was running was against abortion, and not one of them was in favor of an exception to save the life of the pregnant woman. There were other examples of a total lack of empathy for other people's plight, but I can't remember them now.

If I absolutely had to choose a Republican to run the country, I'd probably pick Linda Lingle, former governor of Hawaii. But she's far too liberal to have any kind of standing in the national Republican party.

ETA: To clarify, I can't "support" a person unless I think they can actually run the country. The last time I was glad an incompetent candidate won the Republican primary was in 2000, and look how that turned out.

[charlyvi]

46. And these were the folks all the pundits said

were a really deep bench!

[RAFisher]

18. Rand Paul. I agreed with him more than any other Republicans.

Probably unpopular but I wanted the candidate who I thought is best for this country. I'd never vote for Paul but felt it was the best in the GOP field. Nothing is 100%. If someone is the GOP nominee there's always a chance that they could win. People needed to be prepared for that. I remember back in 2010 when some Democrats here in Florida wanted Scott to be the GOP nominee for
Governor because they thought it would be a slam dunk for the Democrat Alex Sink to win. Well look how that turned out...

[spooky3]

19. I "wanted" Cruz simply because he is so loathsome to most sentient human beings, that I thought

he would be easier to beat than some others.

[Eric J in MN]

37. Me too. I felt that Ted Cruz is obviously more conservative

...than the mood of the country this year and we could defeat him.

[DavidDvorkin]

20. Cruz

I thought he would be the worst for them. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe Trump really is the worst.

Of course Huckabee or Carson would have been even worse, but neither of those had a realistic chance of winning the nomination.

[SaschaHM]

23. Trump or Cruz.

I felt like America needed a referendum on all the bigotry that the GoP had embraced in the past 8 years and they were the only 2 candidates that weren't masking it in niceties.

[blackspade]

25. I thought Rubio would pull it off.

He would be pathetically easy to beat in the general....He's as dumb as a post.

[lovemydog]

26. I didn't care too much

because I feel as long as we get to the polls we win.

They may vary in levels of rhetoric, but most republicans vote pretty similar. They help the uber rich. They're terrible on social issues.

I think President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren have done a good job lately of tying Trump to other republicans. Their inaction on immigration reform, lowering the cost of health care, reasonable gun control sickens me.

[David__77]

27. While I had no "pick," I think Trump comes closest.

Trump, if just because I find it so fascinating that one of the two parties' voters have so jarringly gone against the media/think tank/elected official opinion.

[vicman]

28. Carly, all the way

[PatrickforO]

29. I 'supported' Trump because I did not want

a stronger candidate. As it is, Trump's campaign may implode prior to the Republican Convention, and we might well get someone like Paul Ryan. This, to my mind, is far more dangerous to our nation than a Trump candidacy.

But...geez...ALL of them are dangerous. We've really gone downhill since Reagan slithered into the WH with his neoliberal friends.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

39. They are all dangerous.

[Scootaloo]

30. I can tell you who I was scared of running / winning

Romney. Part of my brain still worries about him being shoehorned in.

[merrily]

31. Two schools of thought on Republican Presidential primaries.

One school says, root--maybe even vote--for the worse possible Republican to increase the chances that the Democratic nominee will win the general.

Another school says, root-maybe even vote--for the best possible Republican so that the country as a whole has a better shot, just in case the Republican nominee wins the general.

I don't vote in the Republican primary and I don't worry overly much about rooting for a Republican.

[joshcryer]

33. Trump was my wildest dreams.

I literally discounted him until the second or third round of votes when he came out ahead, whenever it was. Once he started gaining I realized my wildest dreams were coming true.

[grossproffit]

34. Carson. My favorite was him standing in the hallway while his name was repeatedly callled.

He did well in the polls until he opened his mouth. Wow, what a nut job.

[AntiBank]

35. many of the replies on here so depress me

Yes Trump will probably end up being the easiest candidate to beat, but in some nightmarish scenarios he could actually win.

That is not my main point. Win or lose Trump has, is, and will do incredible damage to this nation on multivariate levels. I truly fear the coming violence especially, but he is so racist and divisive and even more importantly has ripped open the barrier, the civic glue that at least somewhat was stomping down the tens of millions of racists in this country from openly and with a now legitimate (in their minds) public focal point expressing en masse with both words and actions their hatred.

This could easily explode from both sides into horrific mass violence over a prolonged event horizon.

I also fear that if the the Republican Party truly implodes and splinters up that the resultant influx of slight centre right people and corporatist forces will by default drift over into the Democratic Party and not only pull us further right, but simply by their added numbers eviscerate any need for the Democratic leadership to rely (and thus compromise) with the progressive wing. We will become truly orphaned.

[bigwillq]

36. Kasich or Trump (nt)

[obamanut2012]

38. TRump

Because, I think he can be beaten by almost any Dem, and as horrible as he is, there is no religious zealotry behind it.

[creon]

40. I voted for Sanders

I voted for Sanders in the the primary, as I wanted the competition. I did not want Clinton to coast to the nomination.

I had no problem with either one and would have voted for either in November. I am concerned about Congress - which is one third of the Govt.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

41. I was talking about who on the republican side you would want the democrat to go up against

[creon]

45. I misunderstood

First, I do not know any competent GOP person that the GOP would nominate.

Trump would be the easiest to defeat. In my view.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

47. Agreed

[VOX]

43. For years, I thought Jeb! had a lock on it...

I thought it'd be great to see him get hammered in the November general election...

But boy, was I ever wrong. Jeb! folded like a wet newspaper.

[Peacetrain]

44. That is such a good questions Lioness..

On one side.. it was Trump because he is such a buffoon.. but to be honest with you .. he was also my biggest fear.. because if God forbid he got into office.. He would be a wild man and who knows what crazy road he would take us all down..

[Bluenorthwest]

48. I support no Republican in any way. I want the Republican nominee to drop out in massive scandal

mid October, who that nominee is matters not at all to me, for I am a Democrat. I'm not a 'Reagan Democrat' like many if not most of DU, so I don't have 'favorite Republicans' and to me any Republican in office is a crime against America.