Capital idea. The WSJ noted that Trump is the single least popular presidential candidate in American history. In a strong second place: Hillary Clinton.

Watching the Democrats weakly "rally" behind a problematic candidate most of them cant stand while the GOP liberally dowses itself with gasoline and flicks a Zippo has been a national embarrassment. It's as if the absolute worst tendencies of each party have been made flesh.

I think there is a whole list of reasons why both candidates should not be president.

If the RNC doesn't like their candidate, they can fire him. If the DNC doesn't like their candidate, they can fire her. There's no reason to start a constitutional crisis over it.

ION -- The one group that had, up until now, escaped Trump's scapegoating was the gay community. Trump had been pretending to be LGBTQ (he has to read that bit off his notes every time) friendly but has finally dropped that facade. He targeted homosexuality with dog whistle language about religious liberty in his op-ed targeting Mormons in Utah. It's okay though, gay folks aren't stupid and they never believed a single word that ever came out of his mouth ... and neither will the Mormons.

The Speaker would have to assume the Presidency if both candidates were disqualified. There's no way Obama could extend his term and he probably wouldn't want to either.

A date for a new election would have to be set and all parties start to work choosing candidates. Meanwhile Paul Ryan would be running the show.

I don't like Paul Ryan. I don't like or trust anyone who would want to privatize social programs that have worked for decades. Privatization is a way to eventually get rid of them altogether.

As a strong believer in labour unions which unfortunately many working Americans today don't have much use for, I see anti labour President Ryan set about breaking up what's left of them

Better we leave things as they are. Let the billionaire dolt lose by a landslide and the lady with a lot of shady baggage in tow do her time in the White House and then most likely end up as a one term President

The speaker wouldn't have to do anything. The parties can put forth another candidate.

Precisely. There was a link a while back to a good summary of options should the RNC decide to get rid of Trump. Essentially, both the RNC and DNC are private parties and can within their internal rules do whatever they like with regards to nominating a candidate.

The biggest problems are external to the parties such as getting on the ballot and convincing voters to vote for the new guy or that ticking yes to the old guy actually means a vote for the new guy.

Most likely scenario is the status quo of the current candidates.

As an aside I note the difficulties McMullin is having. He missed CA though significantly is on in UT. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...ifornia-227032

Well, sort of.

Trump's name is on the ballot. The Republicans could theoretically claim that Trump is not their guy and choose someone else, but Trump's name would remain on the ballot (perhaps with the party affiliation removed), while it would probably be too late to get that replacement candidate onto various state ballots. So the new Republican candidate would be a write-in candidate.

Of course, the voters could still vote for the now-independent Trump. Many states ban "faithless electors", so Trump electors would be obligated to vote for him even if they did not want to.

For all practical purposes, there is little choice but to keep Trump on the ticket. What the RNC can do is cut his funding and support, and the odds are very high that it will.

Well it's all irrelevant anyway as there's nothing in the Constitution to cover such a situation and any attempt to disqualify either candidate for no legal reason would be met with widespread opposition. Still it's worth imagining what could happen if such a situation ever did occur

The Republican leadership doesn't need a reason. It could remove him if it really wanted to.

It won't do it in part because it would upset a lot of Republicans. But at this point, the establishment must be hoping that a Trump implosion at the polls will provide a reality check for the base. Such hopes are misplaced, but I suspect that they have them.

You are that confident that the GOP can find an electable candidate? They have had 8 years to get themselves together since Bush and they have just fractured themselves more and more over time.

Trump apparently has Roger Ailes coaching him. Ailes is a seriously (diabolically) professional groom and spin master.

It's a long time till November. People have short memories. And there's a lot of them who truly want to believe (even though Trump has made that pretty hard to do). If Ailes can somehow turn Trump around, he actually has a shot.

I question whether Trump can be tamed. It's just not in his DNA. Like an alcoholic, I expect the chances of Trump falling off the narcissistic sociopath rehab wagon is pretty high. Lots of risk for the RNC.

I could see that removing Trump would fracture the Party and probably with permanently fatal consequences. Trump has strong followers in the rust belt and mid west states, older whites who no longer have any faith in the traditional establishment of either party and you cant blame them since for several decades their towns have continued to decay and decent paying jobs and better prospects as elusive as ever.

Yeah, I know. They could distance themselves from him but couldn't stop him from continuing to run.

Still, it's a little ridiculous to suggest that Paul Ryan will suddenly become president or that we will rewrite the constitution to make Obama's last term 5 years long.

I don't think Hillary is in the true sense electable either but she's probably the best choice in a very lousy pick. If she wins the election as she no doubt will she can credit a lot of her victory not so much to her charisma and trustworthiness but far more to the sheer ineptness, tactlessness and foolish behavior of her opponent.

Had it been Cruz or Rubio the situation might have been very different indeed.

I don't think he is fully tamable. We've already seen examples on his twitter feed. It is easy to tell when a staffer is tweeting. They manage to hide his phone for a couple of days then he comes back. He doesn't like reading from a script. The ego is too strong, too quick to anger.