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JimDandy

(7,318 posts)
12. Republicans best chance of an acceptable president to them is to run an Independent.
Sat May 7, 2016, 12:03 AM
May 2016

Neither Trump nor Clinton is acceptable to them.

The reasons for running a third candidate are twofold:

1. The electoral college requirement that the president receive an absolute majority of electoral votes (270) makes it so that if a very strong third candidate is running, then all 3 candidates are likely to not receive 270 votes. In that case, the Republican controlled House of Representatives picks the President. They will pick the Republican-backed third candidate.

2. There is actually a decent chance in this climate that such a candidate could win the electoral votes outright, but only if a MASSIVE GOTV campaign was started immediately (this is where the Koch brothers make their first entrance), because the 3rd candidate will need overwhelming numbers of voters to win under those conditions. They will need to push absentee ballots, early voting and same day registration in every strongly controlled Republican state that currently allows them (Ironic since Repubs have tried to disenfranchise us Dem voters by stifling early voting and same day registration) in order to garner those kind of numbers. In only strongly held Republican controlled states that don't yet have those laws they will need to have the Republican State Legislators quickly enact them. They will need to appeal to Independents who are moderate conservatives to pull this off and that is where the Koch brothers money comes in again--with ads--and they need to be 3/4 negative ads against the other 2 candidates and 1/4 positive re the 3rd candidate.) They will need to get this going before the end of this month to make it work and they will need to convince every Republican they can to withdraw all financial, infrastructure, and physical support from the Republican convention that they can that is not already under contract-ads, businesses, moderate down-ticket candidates, media etc. Bring a dark curtain down on it.

That's the strategy to save their party and get an acceptable candidate in.

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