Polls and Stuff on the Hung-Chu Swap

Waiting... waiting....

As we wait to see what Saturday's meeting of the KMT brings, there is a spate of articles in media saying that the Special Investigative Division is investigating accusations that the KMT offered a bribe to current KMT Presidential Candidate Hung Hsiu-chu to step aside. This is purely pro forma, despite media attempts to sex it up, and will not come to anything even in the highly unlikely event that it is actually true, but I just want to publicly inform the KMT that I will happily accept a large payment from the KMT not to run for President on a KMT ticket.

The papers here are reporting that Eric Chu, the current Chairman of the KMT, is going to accept the nomination. The KMT is getting around its lack of a mechanism for repealing the nomination by repealing the resolution making Hung the nominee. News that Chu is the man was coicident with reports saying that 2015 economic growth in Taiwan is, like KMT economic competence, essentially undetectable. Glad I am not running at the head of that ticket in this economic environment...

[fixing the chart!!! grabbed the wrong one, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. That will teach me to blog after several hours of editing and translating late at night....]

TT on it:

However, if Chu replaces Hung 44.6 percent of respondents said they would still support Tsai, while Chu would receive 21 percent support and Soong 12 percent.

Chu's numbers will almost certain rise as the KMT campaign settles down and voters gradually mellow out, but how much will the rise be? Probably not much, is the verdict of most observers -- voters are readying to punish the KMT. Chu's campaign is basically going to be an exploration of how long a dead cat can be made to bounce.

Soong is still gently fading and not worth bothering about. Whatever election it is, the Soong retains the same.

Commentary is overflowing, so I won't add. WantWant won the internet this week with headlines: KMT mulling what word to use when it throws Hung under the bus, Hung their heads in shame: Hsiu-chu classier than KMT colleagues, and of course, KMT chair apologizes to Hung for imminent backstabbing. Courtney Donovan Smith, who combines in his awesome self one of my favorite people and one of my favorite commentators, asks Can Anyone Save the KMT? Frozen Garlic mulls the effect of replacing Hung with Chu. WSJ commented on the KMT mess, but then veered into scaremongering. Peter Enav at Thinking Taiwan on the inevitability and history of the KMT implosion. Brian Hoie at New Bloom on whether the KMT is devouring itself.

Solidarity notes that Ma is still trying to suppress Chu and advance Wu Den-yi. After Chu loses the election he will likely step down, and we will see another round of red (non-mainstream KMT) versus blue (mainstream KMT) violence, with the "pragmatic" Ma backing the first crowd and trying to get his man into the chairmanship spot. We on the pro-Taiwan side might have to send a trade delegation to Iowa to purchase next year's corn crop to ensure we have enough popcorn on hand for the post-election KMT civil war.
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Daily Links:

• The stupid struggle over pork continues. Taiwan does not want heavily subsidized US pork to come in and wipe out its producers. Anyone who thinks that the TPP is about containing China need merely look at the purblind stupidity of US TPP policy -- the US will hold up Taiwan's TPP bid to make a handful of insanely wealthy, massively subsidized US producers of pork even wealthier. That's what we call stoopid. Please, Washington, let the pork slide, geostrategy is more important. 
• Interview with the always interesting Wuer Kaixi in Taipei Times
• FocusTaiwan: Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council hopes for institutionalized meetings with the Taiwan Affairs Office. I too hope everyone involved is institutionalized.
• Dengue kills 106. 
• Photoessay: encounters with Filipino workers in Taiwan
• Taiwan to keep trying to get diesel-electric subs

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