COMMENTS:
* Wrong heading. Why do worry about beating Donald. He doesn't have an iota of a chance of winning. However he will remain the ringleader of the understudy and intolerant illiterates.
* If the French people can stand up to a regressive fascist, certainly we Americans can too. Dump Trump!
* Trumps super low 6-8% support does not win you a general election. Ultimately people want the NOT SCARY candidate, which is why Obama won the last 2 elections. Regardless some corporate shill will end up in office regardless of party because that is just the way it is now.
* You would need a GOP field that isn't to self serving to accomplish this. This is America where the GOP is a Joke and at war with each other. The GOP love every aspect of war. Be it here or abroad! The entire planet laughs at the GOP. There's no fixing the GOP.
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France just showed how a candidate like Donald Trump can be beat
By Linette Lopez, December 13, 2015
France just displayed how a candidate like Donald Trump could lose.
Last Sunday, it looked like Marine Le Pen's National Front, a far-right party known for its anti-immigrant rhetoric and stance against the EU, might make an unprecedented leap to power.
In the first round of key regional elections, the party looked like it could take power in six of France's 13 regions.
But in round two a week later, the National Front was completely trounced. The party didn't take a single region.
That's because after seeing the National Front gain such a commanding lead, France's Socialist Party withdrew some of its candidates in key regions and urged its supporters to back the center-right party, the Republicans.
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the center-right party that won at least six regions, called the victory "a refusal to compromise with extremes ... and a unity within the Republican family, a unity with the center."
The key word here is "extremes." In October, Le Pen went on trial for inciting hate speech after making comments that compared Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation.
Last week, Trump called for "a complete shutdown of Muslims coming to United States." It's the kind of rhetoric that no one would be shocked to hear come from Le Pen and her party (though Le Pen herself said the comments went too far).
Like in the U.S., French voters have become tired of their two mainstream parties trading power but doing little with it. That's why the National Front has gaining acceptance and making headway as never before.
Also, like Trump, the National Front has a lot of vocal supporters and draws a bunch of media coverage. They're loud, they pick candidates and get active early, and they worry a lot of people on both sides of the aisle.
The thing is, there aren't necessarily that many of them. Not in France, it seems, and not in the US.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight put it best when he broke down the numbers last month:
Right now, he has 25 to 30 percent of the vote in polls among the roughly 25 percent of Americans who identify as Republican. (That’s something like 6 to 8 percent of the electorate overall, or about the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked.) As the rest of the field consolidates around him, Trump will need to gain additional support to win the nomination. That might not be easy, since some Trump actions that appeal to a faction of the Republican electorate may alienate the rest of it. Trump’s favorability ratings are middling among Republicans (and awful among the broader electorate).And that was before Trump made comments about barring Muslims from entering the US that some have compared to Hitler.
Trump can be as loud as he wants, but it hardly means he's got the votes.
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