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Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[smeeprocket]

Elizabeth Warren just needs to run. Even if we don't win, we are on the right track that way.

But yea, I would grit my teeth and vote for Hillary. It's not like I don't already have an "I'm ready for Hillary" bumper sticker or anything.

Plus, I had to live through Jeb Bush as gov, while he's no Rick Scott, he still gutted employment programs (which caused my dad to almost lose his job as a social worker) and the mental health system (which I got to experience first hand) for all of florida.

[Descan]

Canada just needs to invade you guys and give you a semi-functioning government, really.

It's the least we could do, after giving you Celine Dion and Justin Bieber. :V

[palsch]

Also, I hope nobody else is too intimidated by the two heavyweights on both sides possibly running.

While valid for Hillary, I don't see this as an issue with Jeb. While he has surname recognition, that isn't all good.

Early polling of prospective Republican candidates shows Romney as the Republican heavyweight, with Bush just barely holding the number two slot. He gets a big bump if Romney doesn't run, but that's all name recognition (IMO) and likely to change as the primaries start and other candidates get face time.

His numbers against Hillary in early polls aren't all that positive, although that's fairly standard for all the candidates RCP compare (behind ~7% in a range of 5-11ish).

Contrast to Hillary's lead in the Democratic polling plus the fact that she leads all prospective Republican candidates in the match-up polls. Compare to Biden.

While early numbers don't mean much, the combination of Clinton's name, establishment heft and the reassuring polling suggesting she is a safe win make pushing another candidate considerably harder than in the wide open Republican field. While Bush is certainly a contender, he leaves more oxygen in the room than Clinton does.

[mainiac]

Aren't those head to head polls with Christie a touch out of date considering his popularity has plummeted since then?

[palsch]

Aren't those head to head polls with Christie a touch out of date considering his popularity has plummeted since then?

Latest fieldwork ended on the 9th and showed a 12 point lead for Clinton. But go back to the 5th and Bloomberg had him only 6 points down, and he had Quinnipiac show him only one point down last month. He's always had fairly high unfavourables (IIRC) and those are only likely to go up among non-Republicans, and potentially with other Republicans if it's a bloody primary.

[mainiac]

I thought Christie had low unfavorables until bridgegate?

[Baffler]

Yeah, he does. I wouldn't be surprised if he still got put up though or at least made a good showing, he's really the only major Republican player right now who isn't tasting the colors of the sound of his own voice.

[scriver]

Over here (in Sweden) the news and commentators are talking as if Clinton had already won. While I can't speak very well for the rest of Europe's nation, I get the feeling she's pretty well liked here. She seems to have handled her time as a foreign minister pretty well. Then again, people here probably don't know her actual political leanings very well and base their views on how she carries herself in her public image.

[palsch]

His unfavourables have been high for the last year. I had thought it was longer than that, but still covers the whole period of the relevant match-up polls.

[mainiac]

I was talking about the Biden-Christie polls.

[Twi]

So uh, I thought this is probably the best place to post the idea that my friends and I (by which I mean Aklyon) have been bantering about, seeing as it's a political-ish idea from an American about American politics.

Would it be reasonable to have a fine (something small, but ideally not unnoticeable) incurred for people saying provably false things on the public stage, even without proving slanderous intent? Misleading the public or something like that.

I'm sure this would have unintended consequences I couldn't even imagine, but I've been thinking about it for a while.

[Angle]

Eh, that sounds really difficult. everyone would scream bloody murder, and then there's the problem of who exactly decides what's a lie? Both parties would stuff the thing with their people, who would keep it from indicting them.

[Lord Shonus]

The trend in American politics has always been to be extremely broadly when applying the First Amendment to explicitly political speech because it is so easy -and so very, very dangerous- to use power as a bludgeon to silence an opponent. Even without that factor, it is rare for candidates or authorized affiliates to give explicit lies that could be attacked in such a way, with most political deceptions being based on selective data manipulation (so that you can point to something to back up what you said, and if you take enough heat, you can blame it on legitimate but mistaken analysis), alarmist extrapolations from current trends (which as opinions cannot be lies), and application of loaded terminology that is now so loosely defined as to be impossible to challenge.

There are huge numbers of lies and false rumors in any election, of course, but most of that is chain emails, "satirical" news media (also protected by the First Amendment via the "satire" fig leaf) and such.

[Phmcw]

Can I say that I totally called it? I totally called it. The US have an agreement with their allies in the middle east to drop the price of oil when they need their common ennemies (Iran, Russia...) weakened.

[Lord Shonus]

Uh, nothing in that article substantiates that claim in any way. It states that the recent boom in US oil is contributing to low prices, and Saudi Arabia doesn't support a production cut to artificially inflate prices, but not a single word supports any claim of it being a means of economic warfare.