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Comment by boothead | Hacker News Reader

Nate Silver on twitter:

    No, I didn't predict the the Republican Party would lose it's fucking mind.

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How could he, of all people, have not seen this coming?

Trump basically "primaried" his way to the nomination by going hard right to appeal to the Republican talk-radio base. He'll lose of, course, in the general, but that's the basic strategy of winning any Republican nomination. Many, many Republicans have won their local primaries only to lose in the general.

if we go by number of followers on Twitter, Trump will be winning his way to the white house

Yes, but if we go by number of followers on social media, then Germany is already ruled by nazis. (The far-right AfD has more fans on Facebook than all the other parties combined.)

Far right != nazi

I don't think you can go by the previous "many Republicans" and say that Trump is going to fall prey to the same things they did. I'm not saying he's unstoppable and I'm not saying you have to throw out all conventional wisdom but he's at least so far defied most expectations (which of course are mostly based on historical data)

He's only defied expectations within his own party. The U.S consists of more than the republican party; You have independents, third parties and the democrats. So sure, he'll have those hard right neocons voting for him, but what about everyone else? What about the moderate (disenfranchised) republicans? Or the independents and democrats? I'm sorry, but I haven't met a single independent or democrat who said they'd vote for Trump. He's about as polarizing as they come. He'll get creamed in the general election. I'll go so far as to say that it will be the biggest landslide in history. I'm talking double digits.

Now that he's won the primary he can drop all the hard-right crap he's been saying and try to win over some independents and democrats.

He's never going to lose the hard right republicans to hillary so he doesn't have much to lose by completely flipping on a lot of issues

This is how I see it. I would also guess that a much larger portion of Sanders voters will not vote in the general vs everyone else who voted against Trump in the primary.

As far as I can tell, neoconservatives are horrified by Trump and believe (maybe incorrectly) that he is an isolationist, for entitlements, and against free trade, which is antithetical to their political beliefs.

Cruise on by the National Review or Red State and it's all panic and doom and gloom and "#nevertrump".

I expect he said its fucking mind. One hopes so.

It's one of my weird muscle memory glitches. (Had to type it in rather than link, because no twitter at work).

Years ago I slipped up on this a lot but then ... and you know what they say about the converted!

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