Future presidential candidates will have to run as if they are independents standing far away from the party elites to be victorious, former Donald Trump adviser Sam Nunberg tells Newsmax TV.
"[Barack] Obama won because he ran against two terrible candidates and those are two candidates the establishment picked — John McCain and Mitt Romney," Nunberg said Friday to Newsmax TV's J.D. Hayworth.
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And last year, Nunberg continued, it was a fight between Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.
"Both of those candidates were not the candidates that the elite wanted, that the country club Republicans wanted," he told Hayworth.
"When I was working for the Trump campaign . . . one of the things we studied a lot of people don't remember is that Obama in 2008 ran as a populist candidate.
"There was a lot of populism and he used that to beat Hillary Clinton in the primary. And so populism is something in a campaign that can work nationally."
In fact, it's likely to be the only way to attract voters who, in general polling, say they want a third-party or would vote for an independent candidate, Nunberg said.
"You have to look like an independent within your party to win the presidency, I believe, going forward," he said.
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