NY Times: G.O.P. Donors Seek to Narrow Field of Presidential Candidates to One

[LiberalElite]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/politics/gop-donors-seek-to-narrow-field-of-presidential-candidates-to-one.html?google_editors_picks=true


-snip-
Dozens of the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers have begun privately discussing how to clear the field for a single establishment candidate to carry the party’s banner in 2016, fearing that a prolonged primary would bolster Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate.

The conversations, described in interviews with a variety of the Republican Party’s most sought-after donors, are centered on the three potential candidates who have the largest existing base of major contributors and overlapping ties to the top tier of those who are uncommitted: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and Mitt Romney.
-snip-

The comments are interesting. A number of people refer to Hillary as being a Republican.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Yeah, interesting all right.

Looks like they're taking the wheels off the clown car a little early this time around.

[LiberalElite]

2. One commenter said

they should get a bigger clown car than last time or maybe a trailer to hitch to the clown car for the lesser clowns.

[daleanime]

4. Remember, it's not the number of beings in the car that make it a clown car....

it's that they are clowns.

[yellowcanine]

6. All it will get them is a clown car without wheels.

Good luck with that goopers.

[calimary]

9. Don't get complacent, though.

[yellowcanine]

10. I'm not, but the last time someone tried to "scare off" primary opponents was Phil Graham in 1996.

Remember him? The guy who raised 20 million dollars and beat out Bob Dole for the nomination? Oh wait....

He actually withdrew BEFORE the New Hampshire Primary and endorsed Bob Dole after getting stomped by Pat Buchanan in the Louisiana caucus because Buchanan, though having little money, had passionate supporters of the Religious Right behind him. And that is why this kind of maneuver does not work.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. they don't want Americans to see what their candidates really think...

they are looking for a way to get the Ted Cruz crowd to support Jeb Bush....."Help Us Jebonobi you're our only hope" cry the establishment GOP....they are loathe to be raked over the coals by the Louie Gohmerts and the Rand Pauls fighting it out in a Primary...watching them claw each others eyes out as they are want to do..allows the Democrats to sit back and watch them implode...not good for their "sucker born every minute" marketing style of politics....Just find a way to talk about issues that makes it SEEEEM palatable to their base. And do it in one or two phrases to boot so that they can repeat it without really knowing what it means!

[PAProgressive28]

5. We can laugh all we want at the GOP

but this is the crap that's destroying America. Regular Americans have no say in the matter. The big money will decide who is to next serve them. I really don't want to turn this into another Hillary thread but you can bet the Party will also try to wrap up our primary ASAP.

[LiberalElite]

8. and then we the sheeple

will be expected to dutifully turn out and vote for whoever they say. Remind me again how we're not becoming a two-party dictatorship.

[Jamaal510]

7. Why have elections and primaries anymore?

All they (the RW billionaires) want to do is dump money into ads that sway public opinion favorably for their preferred candidates, while politicians that they've already bought push forth with voter ID laws. It feels like we're creeping back towards the days where only rich landowners had the power to vote.

[DFW]

11. What a stupid headline

When has there EVER been more than one nominee? GOP or otherwise? The field ALWAYS gets narrowed to one, DUH!

What the billionaires want to avoid is a long, bloody primary fight with several billionaires tossing unimaginable (for us mortals) sums of money at rival right wingers, most of whom have only slightly varying versions of the same Fox Noise regurgitation.

Have a "debate" between Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson, and you'd have word for word the same "debate" you'd hear if the people at the podia were Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.

With the money these guys are gonna waste on right wing losers, which all but one of them will be (and the last man standing hopefully being the loser in November, 2016), we could probably fund successful cancer research, build a national tuition-free university from scratch, or build a state-of-the-art hospital that offers all services free of charge.

But what self-respecting Republican billionaire would want to waste a few billion on some useless project like THAT?