WI: Trump wins GOP nomination for president in 2000?

Let's butterfly Dubya away by saying that he loses to Ann Richards in 1994 after his DUI story comes out during the 1994 campaign for Texas governor instead of during the 2000 presidential race.

Without a GOP frontrunner in 2000, the race is a total free-for-all, with Lamar Alexander, Liddy Dole, Alan Keyes, John McCain, etc, all polling in single digits or low double digits by mid-1999.

Instead of making a bid for the Reform Party nod and hawking his creds as an independent, let's say Trump decides to make a serious run as a Republican for the nomination. Also, let's say he clears the field once the votes actually start to come in during the primaries by running as the Republican alternative to Bill Clinton --- a capitalist tough guy who can also be sold to soccer moms. Trump then becomes the Republican nominee and faces off against Gore in the general.

Would Trump still win such a race? We saw how Trump did way better in states like Pennsylvania than Dubya ever did, but way worse in states like Texas. Would Trump best Gore by winning a much more broad-based electoral coalition, i.e., winning mild victories in Southern states while narrowly taking Rust Belt and Midwestern states too that Bush never quite managed to snag? Would Tennessee and Arkansas and possibly Louisiana still vote for Gore as they did Clinton? Does West Virginia remain Democratic? How does this affect the two parties down the line?
 

Philip

Donor
I really don't see how Trump could win the nomination. It was a vastly different time. Steve Forbes seems more likely at the time.
 
Republican Primaries are always based off of the issues at hand that anger or motivate the voters. McCain was the only one who backed the Surge to the hilt, which is why he won in 2008. Romney was the businessman figure in 2012 after 2011 was dominated by the OWS protests. Bush was the candidate in 2000 who promised to return honor and decency to the White House after Clinton, etc.

Trump had his moment in 2016 because the immigration issue was quite raw after the 2014 child migration crisis and the Executive Amnesty. In 2000, immigration was not a motivating issue. Economic times were pretty good, and the Republicans arguably were more pro-immigration than the Democrats (the Buchananites were on the outs and with the Reform Party at the time).
 
Mayhaps Trump, who is more liberal at the time, steals Dubya's "compassionate conservativism" mantra, and wins the nomination among divided conservative opposition. I predict a Gore victory, however. I think Gore holds the South better with Trump as the Republican nominee.
 
Mayhaps Trump, who is more liberal at the time, steals Dubya's "compassionate conservativism" mantra, and wins the nomination among divided conservative opposition. I predict a Gore victory, however. I think Gore holds the South better with Trump as the Republican nominee.

That's sort of what I was thinking --- that Trump is an opportunist who didn't really have an ideology at that time and who would just run as a pro-business Republican with a big name, sort of like Bush did.

I agree that Gore would win a lot of the South, and that West Virginia and Missouri would vote for Gore over Moderate Trump in 2000. I could see New Jersey voting for that kind of Trump though.
 
Trump, prior to the Apprentice, is kind of a Jay Leno punchline during the 1990s to a lot of people after being perceived as a whiz kid in NY real estate in the 1980s. It would be hard for him to gain ground in the 2000s political and media environment. I'm a bit skeptical that 2000 Trump, even if he ran the exact same platform as OTL 2016 Trump, would capture the rust belt, because we were coming off a very good run of economic growth that was felt pretty much top to bottom in the economy.
 
I really dont see how Trump can win the GOP nomination at this point; it took the disaster of the Bush years and the resulting tea party surge to sufficiently wreck the Republican establishment and make the institutions in the GOP weak enough for someone like Trump to seine the nomination.

In the year 2000 the Republican establishment is still fairly strong and would likely be able to quite easily stop Trump.
 
No. It took americans a major sex scandal, a literal drug-addled moron, and a corrupt guy running guns to mexico and using the irs to clamp down on free speech to stomach an idiot like Trump. He'd be sunk by howard stern tapes alone in 2000.
 
Mayhaps Trump, who is more liberal at the time, steals Dubya's "compassionate conservativism" mantra, and wins the nomination among divided conservative opposition. I predict a Gore victory, however. I think Gore holds the South better with Trump as the Republican nominee.
Not gonna work. The compassionate conservatism bit was about being socially conservative, which is something Trump has never felt comfortable being (half his acts on that front are the result of him being hectored into it by the Religious Right). His opponents could pretty much wreck his campaign by shouting "Manhattan Liberal" every thirty seconds.
 
Not gonna work. The compassionate conservatism bit was about being socially conservative, which is something Trump has never felt comfortable being (half his acts on that front are the result of him being hectored into it by the Religious Right). His opponents could pretty much wreck his campaign by shouting "Manhattan Liberal" every thirty seconds.

Yeah, I get that; I never said that that route would be likely. That's just the only way in which I could see that possibly working. Since are so many conservatives running in 2000, I figured that Trump might be able to squeak by with a slim plurality.
 
Republican Primaries are always based off of the issues at hand that anger or motivate the voters. McCain was the only one who backed the Surge to the hilt, which is why he won in 2008. Romney was the businessman figure in 2012 after 2011 was dominated by the OWS protests. Bush was the candidate in 2000 who promised to return honor and decency to the White House after Clinton, etc.

Trump had his moment in 2016 because the immigration issue was quite raw after the 2014 child migration crisis and the Executive Amnesty. In 2000, immigration was not a motivating issue. Economic times were pretty good, and the Republicans arguably were more pro-immigration than the Democrats (the Buchananites were on the outs and with the Reform Party at the time).


Romney was the candidate who first ran right on immigration in 2008 (attacking pro-immigration McCain and Sanctuary City mayor Rudy Giuliani) and continued to do so in 2012 (ripping Perry's relative liberalism on immigration). In 2012 he also ran as the candidate who was going to protect old-age entitlements. The man ran away from Paul Ryan's agenda pretty apparently.

If anything, Romney was a precursor to Donald Trump. A successful businessman who attacked immigration and wasn't willing to go after old-age entitlements.

Issue is, in 2000 the GOP was a different animal compared to today's GOP. A lot of the culturally conservative but economically not so conservative blue collar types who trended into the GOP during the Bush years (and are anti-trade, anti-immigration, and hardcore pro-entitlements) weren't as big a part of the GOP yet. Immigration as a winning issue in a GOP primary first hit in force around 2008. Trump could not win a primary in that GOP.

Trump running as a Democrat in 2000 would be fun though and would be plausible. Trump-Gephardt seems like a ticket that'd make a lot of sense.

If Trump followed through as the Reform candidate, that'd be fun too. Trump-Weicker 2000?
 
That's sort of what I was thinking --- that Trump is an opportunist who didn't really have an ideology at that time and who would just run as a pro-business Republican with a big name, sort of like Bush did.

I agree that Gore would win a lot of the South, and that West Virginia and Missouri would vote for Gore over Moderate Trump in 2000. I could see New Jersey voting for that kind of Trump though.

this is sort of a good point. we were much earlier in this political system than we are now and there were a lot more states theoretically up for grabs - the tristate could certainly be in play, if lean-D
 
Clinton is the sexaholic, Bush is the drug addled moron, and Obama is the overtly corrupt politician that normalized behaviors that would have got Lyndon Johnson and nixon impeached several times over. hence, trump is a natural progression of sorts.
I suppose you have some evidence for the aforementioned drug addiction and corruption?
Also, Nixon is capitalised.
 
I suppose you have some evidence for the aforementioned drug addiction and corruption?
Also, Nixon is capitalised.
Unless you think Bush really choked on a pretzel and was a general retard all around just because he was dropped on his head, I think it was drugs. he's a former coke head and sorry about the capitalization.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Unless you think Bush really choked on a pretzel and was a general retard all around just because he was dropped on his head, I think it was drugs. he's a former coke head and sorry about the capitalization.
You do realize that there's a difference between being a poor public speaker and being stupid, right? Bush was a terrible public speaker, especially when he tried to give off the cuff remarks or answer a question he wasn't expecting. That doesn't make him a moron.

And calling Obama corrupt is like saying the sky is blue. He's a politician. They're all corrupt to one extent or another. They wouldn't have gotten where they are if they weren't.
 
You do realize that there's a difference between being a poor public speaker and being stupid, right? Bush was a terrible public speaker, especially when he tried to give off the cuff remarks or answer a question he wasn't expecting. That doesn't make him a moron.

And calling Obama corrupt is like saying the sky is blue. He's a politician. They're all corrupt to one extent or another. They wouldn't have gotten where they are if they weren't.
Eh, Bush has said in the past that he was in a dark place in the 1970s alcohol and drug wise (apparently Laura threatened to leave him if he didn't sober up). But yeah, he isn't actually an idiot, just way out of his depth (He's been known to be rather articulate about Latin American policy, for example, as well as his present efforts trying to get people to care about poor African AIDS victims by appealing to their inner Christian convictions - too bad a good part of the country have done away with the God bit to focus on Teh White Race). Plus most of the Bushisms come from him trying to sound more Southern than he actually is instead of focusing on the substance of his speeches.
 
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